


Contact High

by cupstealer



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Overstimulation, Period Piece, Pining, Slow Burn, almost too 2006 to function
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-08 18:03:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 84,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19475848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupstealer/pseuds/cupstealer
Summary: Jonathan Toews is the billet brother Patrick never had. Or wanted.(A Sentinel AU in which the most far-fetched thing is Jonathan Toews going 24th in the draft.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The fic takes place in 2006-2007 and features minor characters both real and made up. As an AU, some details have been changed like Patrick Kane Sr’s job and Jackie’s age. The title was borrowed from a song by Architecture in Helsinki. Actually there's a whole [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2NvmN4YO9WYipPbTN9SnA9) for this fic (and a longer, [unabridged playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5bQ5PdC4K3pj2um0hotZIf) because I have no self control, as evidenced by the following 85k).
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has looked this over and encouraged me along the way! And a big shout out to Eleanor, freakydeakymoonmagic, and [cooliofoolios](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cooliofoolios/pseuds/cooliofoolios) for all your help. This doesn’t happen without y'all, full stop. (And I'm sorry, Eleanor, that I didn't title it 'Billet Doux'—I _was_ tempted.) If anyone ever tells you it's impossible to spend two years writing a hockey fic inspired by an episode of Gilmore Girls, you tell them what you saw here today.

Of course his parents knew that he wouldn’t like the idea. That’s why he’s finding out like this. A week before he leaves for London, for the OHL. 

They don’t even say anything. Patrick just wakes up one morning to a different house than the one he went to bed in. At first glance, his bedroom is as he left it. It’s a small room crowded with hockey gear, trophies, shoes, and a couple half-disemboweled suitcases. But by the door is a stack of empty cardboard boxes that weren’t there last night. He thumbs the sleep from his eyes and throws a t-shirt on to stumble into the hall.

“Mom!”

“In here!” His mom is in the kitchen cleaning up from breakfast. The girls have already left for school and his dad is probably starting his workday at HSBC Arena bright and early, though the NHL preseason is still weeks off.

“What’s with the boxes?”

“Good morning to you, too.” She pushes a plate of cold bacon towards him and he takes it gratefully.

“Good morning, Mom,” he recites dutifully. “But really, I think two or three bags should do it. I’m just taking clothes and gear.”

“The boxes aren’t for Ontario.”

“Okay…” Patrick looks at her expectantly, shoving a strip of bacon into his mouth.

She dries her hands by the sink and comes to sit across from him. “We’re hosting a player this year.”

Patrick scrunches up his face. “A player? Like, a Sabres player?”

His mom gives him a look like that should be obvious. “Yes.”

“Where would he even stay?” Patrick asks, baffled. It isn’t a huge house. They don’t have any spare bedrooms just lying around.

“Your room, honey,” she says, letting the ‘duh’ remain subtext.

The lack of warning is enough to make him splutter. “And you didn’t think to ask me?”

“Patrick, you leave next week. You’ll be gone the whole time. And you were the one who was begging to go to Florida after the playoffs to train with Carter. Your dad and I thought you’d be happy that we’re deciding to sign off on that.”

He is happy to hear that, of course. There was a strong chance they’d want him home between the end of the OHL season and the draft, but he has to be in peak shape for the NHL Combine and training with a fellow prospect seems like a good idea. He knows Carter MacLean from USNTDP. They’re both playing in the OHL this year—Patrick in London and Carter in Guelph—and then they both have the draft in June, so they pitched the idea that Patrick could go train in the MacLeans’ hometown. That it was in sunny Florida under the minimal supervision of Carter’s lax parents was pure coincidence. So yeah, Patrick hoped they would say yes, but he didn’t know it would mean he’d have to give up his _childhood room._ His _place in his home._

“Who even wants to stay here?” he wonders before he can stop himself, thinking of his cramped bedroom and their full house. His mom’s eyebrows lower dangerously above her mug of coffee. He continues hastily, “I mean, if the guy’s got an entry level contract, can’t he afford a place in town? Or stay with someone on the team?”

Patrick’s dad is an assistant coach for the Sabres, and when guys need a place, he offers. They’ve hosted young guys before for prospects camp and stuff like that. But that’s normally in the summer, when there’s at least one bedroom free at any given point because of summer camp or whatever. Not a whole season.

“He wanted to billet with a family.”

Translation: his parents wanted him to billet with a family. 

“And because Justine lives so close—” his mom starts, and the pieces all fall together.

Justine is their neighbor. More specifically, Justine is a professional guide. Plenty of people are guides or at least have the potential for it. Patrick himself is living proof that not everyone with guide potential ends up a mantra-toting guru. It’s estimated that guides are about twice as common as sentinels, but none of it is exact because there’s a whole spectrum of guide potential. The sentinel statistics are similarly fuzzy. But if you buy into the popular metric, two percent of the population have appreciable levels of sentinel capability and a little under five percent have guide potential. So there are potential guides, actual guides, and professional guides. _Professional_ guides like Justine operate like therapists. For unbonded sentinels, they can be lifesavers. So having her nearby would be like keeping a first aid kit around for this mystery Sabres rookie.

This mystery Sabres rookie who is clearly Jonathan Toews. Forget surveying the Sabres system. Out of the entire past three NHL draft classes—some seven hundred odd prospects—there were less than two dozen sentinels. It’s lower than the national average, probably because most sentinel abilities make a hockey player’s job harder. Gretzky wasn’t running around out there with crazy heightened senses, unless you count hockey sense. Active sentinel players like Ovechkin are finding success in the NHL in spite of their senses (a locker room is no place for a sensitive nose; no wonder the guy’s nuts). Sentinels with a significant skill are more likely to seek out an occupation that makes the best of it. Lots of chefs and law enforcement officers, heavy military recruitment. 

Of those twenty-one sentinel draft picks, only eight are unbonded. Hockey is a dangerous sport for an unbonded sentinel, and kids seriously aiming for something like the NHL make a concerted effort to find a guide and bond at a younger age. To go into the draft unbonded is pretty bold; it really only happens if a player is lucky enough to have a provisional bond with a family member or some special circumstance. Thus, only eight unbonded sentinel draft picks out of three whole years. And of those eight unbonded players, only one was drafted to Buffalo.

“I have to give up my room to Toews?” It’s only a little whiny.

“Yes,” she says firmly. “Those boxes are for your clothes and clutter. Anything you aren’t taking to London, pack it up and we’ll store it for a bit, okay?”

Patrick crunches on his third bacon strip petulantly. “Okay,” he mumbles unenthusiastically through the food. “It was nice being your son,” he says, just to be a brat, and slumps down the hallway back to his room to pack.

*

The thing about leaving is that he doesn’t want to. Patrick’s used to it, it’s been the drill for four years now, but every year he thinks it’s going to get a little easier and it just doesn’t. He’s perpetually blindsided by the feeling that he’s just gotten home when he has to up and move again.

He always misses the clockwork of his family moving around the house. The sound of the coffeemaker in the kitchen burbling in tune with his dad’s razor. The spectrum of apparently hair-related noises coming from behind the locked door of the hall bathroom, never ending a second earlier than 7:25 AM, but frequently continuing later until Erica has to force herself out the door and launch herself towards the car for school. The scampering of Jackie’s feet across the hardwood when the other girls kick her out at bedtime. The muffled rhythm of Jessica’s iTunes playlists rolling along in the room above Patrick’s until just around midnight. And not long after, the quiet whirr of the freezer when his mom opens it to sneak out a frozen York peppermint patty. He imagines the environment would be quite calming if he were a sentinel. The reliability.

The girls have grown up without him in a lot of ways; the music and the bedtimes and colors of their bedroom walls have changed. But the fact that he can still track the choreography of it all when he’s home is a comfort, like he didn’t miss out entirely. Like no one stole it while he was gone. 

The day before Patrick heads up to London, Toews’ things are delivered. They arrive in neat, heavy boxes that sit in a clump by the entryway like a hundred-pound eviction notice. He feels sullen whenever he sees the boxes out of the corner of his eye, fighting the urge to sneer at them, “I’m going, I’m going.” 

He’s already said goodbye to all his Buffalo friends. Said goodbye to his summer hookup, Meredith. School started for all of them weeks ago anyways. He’s finally finished packing all of his things. Everything that wasn’t loaded into the jeep was carried down to the basement to live with the workout equipment and pullout couch. The girls are in school and his parents are out and about. They’re cooking out tonight to send Patrick off, but in the meantime the empty house is eerie. He can’t stand the sight of his cleaned-out bedroom. It looks sterile and frightening, like deforestation or a poorly removed tattoo. It was supposed to be permanent.

He spends his last afternoon home schlepping Toews’ boxes into his room, at his mother’s request. There’s no one home to see him, so he maintains an impressively bad attitude throughout the chore. He lets the final and heaviest box thunk to the floor haphazardly, then eyes it, wondering what Toews sent that’s so heavy. Patrick looks away, but the only thing for his eyes to focus on are his empty, depressing room and the clock on the wall ticking away the idle seconds. The box leers up at him from the floor.

The last time Patrick met Jonathan Toews, they were thirteen and Toews had to wear bright orange earplugs on the ice. Toews was pretty normal, got along with everyone, maybe a little more grave about the sport than their other teammates, but that was something he and Patrick had in common. 

The second game they played in together, Toews was putting his earplugs in and a couple of the guys near Patrick started chuckling about stuffing cheetos in their ears. This was a month or so before Patrick’s guide potential registered (a late bloomer), so he didn’t really have any personal connection to the sentinel community or whatever, but the chuckling still rubbed him the wrong way. Patrick managed to catch Toews’ eyes in spite of the kid’s dogged focus on putting on his gear and said, “Hey, I’ve got a question.” He knew Toews could hear him speaking at a normal volume, even through the orange foam. 

A couple heads bounced up to look at Patrick, waiting to see what would happen. The most exciting thing to happen all day was Michael S accidentally stepping on Michael B’s Walkman and breaking it.

“Why the earplugs?” Patrick asked. Before Toews’ eyebrows could scrunch up too much, Patrick continued, “I mean, seems like anyone’d rather have nose plugs in here.” Toews grinned at him and snickered along with everyone else when dirty socks were thrown in Patrick’s direction. He and Toews fist-bumped before hitting the ice and that was that. 

He’s admired the way Toews stuck with hockey, the way his name turned up and stayed in the conversation leading up to his draft year. It’s not an easy feat when teams see you as a liability. After what happened to Lindros, it looked like a sentinel would never be drafted in the first round; not when GM’s had to be prepared for a nervous system meltdown at any turn. So Patrick was rooting for Toews in the ’06 draft this past summer, always happy to see someone use pure skill to shut down other doubts. And it would take a lot of skill—Toews had not one but three enhanced senses and no bond, provisional or otherwise. He still remembers seeing Toews’ face on TV, the moment his name was called, 24th overall. Remembers seeing the stoniness guys use to cover nerves give way to a potent mix of relief and frustration. Patrick has to admit he’s curious about how the guy turned out.

According to the clock on his bedroom wall, it takes Patrick a full ten seconds of standing in his room for boredom and curiosity to get the best of his scruples. He grabs a boxcutter, figuring that if moving Toews’ boxes for him is neighborly, then unpacking them is just going the extra mile.

The heavy box, Patrick finds, is half linens and half books. At the top are the linens, all brand new specialty fabrics still in their packaging. Makes sense for a sentinel. He tosses them onto the bed. Wiggling his fingers in nosy anticipation, he digs into the books. The volume of books alone labels Toews a nerd. Patrick still reads occasionally, but nothing even close to the size and subject matter of the material in front of him. He knows his Mom is still disappointed Patrick is going to the OHL instead of the college route, even though it was a family decision. Maybe having an intellectual like Toews filling in for him can be her consolation prize.

He rifles through some sports biographies (Steve Prefontaine, Steve Yzerman, Monica Seles), a few paperbacks Patrick recognizes from English ( _Call of the Wild_ , _Harrison Bergeron_ ), and a few books with French titles. Then he spies a cover that makes his hand actually recoil from it instinctively. After a beat, he reaches back in to pick the book up.

The dust jacket is bright red, with the white silhouette of a man who has water up to his neck hoisting a heavy ladder over his head. _The Burden of Potential_ by Mark B. Harrow is a very well-known book, though it hasn’t been around long. Most people would recognize that cover from news coverage even if they haven’t read it. More of the titles in Harrow’s works than not are buzzworthy. He’s made a name for himself as a writer and sentinel who has lots (and lots) of thoughts about the sentinel’s place in society. And in history, namely as the next step in evolution. Yeah. There are scholars who will jump to defend Harrow from ‘overreactions’ to the work, but Patrick doesn’t feel much sympathy for a man who has yet to renounce the title ‘sentinel supremacist.’ 

As if Harrow’s approach wasn’t already upsetting enough, there’s also the way he talks about guides, who are ‘key to the system,’ of course. So key that Harrow spends all of two pages talking about them. Flipping through, Patrick lands on a dog-eared page and finds it’s one of those two whole pages Harrow spends on guides out of his entire book. His eyes skim the line _“... serves as a mediator between the Sentinel and his surroundings of clamoring stimuli and typicals. Consider: what would we do without sponges? Guides are crucial sponges that keep the Sentinel from letting his power become a liability. While it can feel difficult and demeaning, staying grounded in typical society with the help of a guide is actually a critical part of establishing the Sentinel’s... ”_

Patrick lets out a long, low whistle. If Toews’ philosophy actually is in any way similar to Harrow’s, it’s no wonder he’s unbonded. He might even think himself above it. Unimpressed, Patrick drops the book back into the box, letting it land dogeared and bruised. He stuffs everything else back in the box, too, deciding he’d rather just watch TV than continue snooping. Well, now he knows how Toews turned out.

*

“And Jess has volleyball games so often now I feel like we hardly see her at dinner.”

“She playing well?”

“From what I can tell, yes. She’s working up an appetite, anyways. I didn’t think it was possible, but it seems like we’re going through even more food than when you were home.” Patrick’s mom laughs, “I’ve got a five-pound roast in the slow cooker right now and I’m wondering if it’ll be enough.”

“Jeez,” Patrick says, holding his phone up to his ear with his shoulder as he folds his shirts. 

“Of course, part of that’s because of Jon, but still, I feel like I’m cooking for an army some nights.”

“Is it different? Cooking for him?” 

Toews is a Tier Three sentinel and Patrick is pretty sure one of Toews’ three senses is smell, which for most sentinels amounts to food sensitivity (though an actual heightened sense of taste operates differently). 

“Mm, surprisingly, no. I was worried about that, you know. But when I asked him about it, he had a list all ready of the spices and foods he has to avoid. He apologized for being a difficult eater—Mind you, the list wasn’t even that bad. It works pretty well with the stuff I would make for you on a strict meal plan anyways. Then he told me he’d like to cook for us on a weekly basis if we could stand his cooking.”

Patrick snorts in disbelief, “Yeah? Did he pony up?” Patrick tries to help out his host family with chores and be polite, but that? That is just overkill. Honestly, it just makes Patrick wonder what Toews is compensating for.

“Once a week,” his mom affirms. Maybe he’s a serial killer, Patrick thinks. “When he’s in town, anyways. Honestly, he is the nicest boy. Not a bad cook either, though the food is very…. _very_ healthy. Have you ever heard of quinoa?”

Scrunching his nose up, Patrick says, “No. What is it?”

“Bland,” his mom says frankly. “But it is just _so_ nice to have night off without doing takeout or something unhealthy. I’ve even lost a few pounds.” Maybe he kills puppies. “Jon makes his own peanut butter—did I mention that? He went out and bought jars and labels and everything. Odd boy.”

“Can’t… can’t he hear you?” Patrick’s room is the closest to the kitchen. 

His mom laughs, “No, sweetheart. He’s in Pittsburgh with your dad and the team for a preseason game. They won’t be back until late.”

“Oh.”

“Besides, he mostly wears headphones when he’s in his room.”

 _His_ room. Patrick feels his face tighten. His hands pause in the process of pairing socks from the laundry basket.

“Well that’s thoughtful of him,” Patrick manages. “Privacy and all.”

“For his benefit too, I imagine. God only knows what the girls listen to upstairs.”

“Mm.”

“Well, what about you? What has Mrs. Wilson been making for you? Are you eating enough? You looked a little skinny in the game tape I watched with your dad last week.”

“I’m eating plenty,” Patrick insists. “Mrs. Wilson is a good cook. I’m trying to put on weight, but you know how it is.” What it is is frustrating as hell. He keeps hoping for a significant increase or a Hail Mary growth spurt ahead of the combine next June, but the Wilson’s bathroom scale keeps singing the same song. 

“Just do your best sweetheart,” his mom says, sympathetic to Patrick’s frustration. But then she shifts right back into nagging. “Are you helping with the dishes? Jon’s helping with the dishes.”

Patrick rolls his eyes and hefts the laundry basket up, “Yes, Mom.”

“Oh, _‘Yes, Mom.'_ ” She mimics Patrick’s put-upon tone. “Well, I think that’s my cue.”

“Can’t help with the dishes if I’m on the phone.” 

She laughs and then sighs feelingly. “I miss you, sweetheart.”

“Miss you too, Mom.”

Patrick really is eating plenty. He’s putting on as much bulk as he can, which is apparently none at all. In spite of that, he’s putting up good numbers playing on the Knights’ top line with Gagner and Kostitsyn. Whether it’s enough to make NHL teams overlook his size is the question that keeps him up at night. All he wants is to make them look. All he wants is to be picked first. He wakes up sweaty from dreams where he scores the most stunning goals and stadium is dead silent as the crowd just ignores him.

Then in mid-October, the NHL season starts and Toews goes and scores on his very first shift. Patrick watches the goal, watches Toews power up the ice with all the height and bulk you could ask for from a guy his age, watches the crowd cheer, and Patrick hates him. 

It’s bad enough to be kicked out of his bedroom to begin with. It’s just salt in the wound that it’s by this guy in particular. It doesn’t help that Patrick’s immersed in locker room banter about so-and-so’s billet sister the other night. The unease was already flickering in the back of his mind. Patrick has had his share of billet families, okay? And his friends have billeted with even more. He knows what dudes can get up to when there are girls in the house. Toews had better tread fucking carefully.

He has an away game in Kitchener, and his mom and the girls come to watch. He notches two assists that night and meets them in the hall after he escapes the locker room. His mom hugs him tight and says it’s still hard for her, having him so far away. She says it’s worth it to know he’s going to go as far as he can.

The next day, he’s in Coach Hunter’s office for an evaluation, since they’ve hit the ten game mark, and Coach says to him, “You’re doing well, Pat. You’re figuring it out.” Six goals, five assists in ten games. Good numbers. 

Patrick shakes his head. He’s got every single whiff of frustration from the past few months as the wind in his sails, and he’s charting a course to Good Isn’t Good Enough Island. “I can be better.”

“Well, it’s a tough league, Pat.” Coach Hunter might be hearing self-admonishment, but that’s not really where Patrick is coming from.

“No, no,” Patrick says. “I’ll be better.” It isn’t even a promise. It’s a realization.

*

It’s a quarter to eleven on an overnight away trip to Sudbury and Patrick’s fucking around on his laptop. Gags is his road roommate, which means they’ve got give or take five extra dudes hanging out in their room on any given night. He normally enjoys it. On a good night, it feels like they’re holding court, he and Gags. But tonight, Patrick’s pretty beat and content to just run out the clock playing on his laptop until curfew whisks his teammates back to their own hotel rooms.

Patrick’s getting caught up on his Sabres news, watching highlights. As a highlight reel from the preseason game in Pittsburgh ends, the next video starts playing automatically. The words “Rookie Profile” pop up on the screen in cutesy letters and then it’s Toews’ smug mug on Patrick’s screen, answering inane personal questions like Patrick gives a good goddamn. 

All Patrick really hears is, “Uh I guess uh um I dunno aboot that uh I’m Canadian uh bagged milk ice fishing look how tall I am.”

He snorts when Toews says his favorite band is “uh, I dunno, uh, Our Lady Peace?”

“Here’s a question from all the ladies out there watching, since you’re a single guy: What do you look for in a girl?” the Sabres reporter asks, wiggling her eyebrows for effect.

Toews turns a bit red and fidgets. “Um… wow, I dunno how to answer that one. I guess I uh tend to go for blondes?” He and the reporter laugh a little.

 _‘I bet you do,’_ Patrick thinks, grinding his teeth as he pictures that d-bag putting the moves on Erica. The overprotective brother isn’t a role Patrick normally plays, but something about this guy just sets him off. 

His ‘aw, shucks’ routine needles at Patrick, especially when his mind pairs it with the image of Toews scrubbing dishes and charming Patrick’s family. Patrick doesn’t have a problem with people being genuinely nice or humble, but something about Toews seems untrustworthy.

“What are you watching?” The bed dips as Jarram leans in to look over Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick likes hanging with Jarram; he’s one of the quieter guys on the team. Patrick wordlessly tilts the laptop so they can both see the screen.

“Toews? I played with him, back in the day,” Jarram says, like he’s a vet. There’s a weird expression on his face. “Nice guy, but something always bothered me about him.” He doesn’t say anything else, though. Just leans back on an elbow and watches the interview.

“Yeah?” Patrick prompts, because you can’t lead into that and not dish.

“Oh, just little stuff. We were on a team together back in Bantam and one night, he gets a pretty spectacular hat trick. So the next day we decided to congratulate him with Gatorade powder in his helmet.” Jarram squints upward, remembering. “And he puts the helmet on and splutters about it, being a good sport of course, acting a little embarrassed, too. But I started thinking after, how the hell does a guy with super vision miss that? There had to be little microscopic bits of powder spilled all over the place, bright orange—it’s not like we were especially careful about it. And I dunno, I kept thinking about it, him pretending to be fooled just to humor us. Pretending to be embarrassed. ‘Oh, you got me!’ Like he was above us or something. Just rubbed me the wrong way, you know?”

“Maybe he wasn’t paying attention,” Gags says from the other bed.

“Have you met that guy?” Jarram laughs. “He’s always paying attention. Laser fucking focus, man.” He sticks his pointer fingers out in front of his eyeballs for emphasis. “I don’t think he’s done a single thing on accident his entire life.”

*

The OHL season is in full swing now and Patrick is living up to his words in Coach Hunter’s office. On school days, there’s optional practice for members of the team who are out of high school, and Patrick decides they aren’t optional for him. He came to London to play for Coach Hunter with as few distractions as possible instead of doing NCAA hockey, and he’s going to make the most of his time here. And on days without games or mandatory practice or optional ice time, he jogs the mile to Robbie Drummond’s house with Gags so they can do shooting drills and play video games and watch game tape. They lift occasionally, too, because Patrick’s still too small.

“You better not be wearing yourself out, Pat.” Mrs. Wilson places a plate of orange slices in front of him unprompted.

He gives her a tired grin. “I’m not. Half the time, Robbie and I are just goofing off. Plus, it’s too cold for me to jog to his place now, so I just drive. Pretty lazy day, all things considered.” He doesn’t mention that Robbie’s old enough to buy beer for them, but it’s certainly a factor in their productivity.

She snorts. “If that’s your idea of a lazy day, then sure. I swear, my son could learn a thing or two from you.”

Patrick shrugs, “Different routines work for different guys.” He fits a massive orange slice in his mouth and savors the rush of sweetness. 

“I just think Steven needs to take it more seriously. If he isn’t going to give it everything, then he ought to be looking at college instead.” 

Patrick likes Mrs. Wilson. She treats him like an adult while still shamelessly coddling him however she can. But sometimes when they talk about Steven, Patrick feels like she looks to him as an advisor or something instead of a 158 lb. juniors player who’s barely a year older than her son. He’s working on another orange slice when the thought creeps into his brain that his mom might talk to Toews like this. The fruit is suddenly hard to swallow. 

“I just wish my son were more like you. Your focus, your commitment.” She sighs, “It’s too bad he’s billeting in Oshawa, maybe you would’ve rubbed off on him.”

Patrick gives her a weak smile to acknowledge the compliment. He really hopes his mom isn’t having this conversation with Toews. “I’m sure I’d have plenty to learn from him, too.” Patrick polishes off the fruit and carries his plate to the sink to scrub it clean. “Thank you for the snack.”

*

At the end of October, they have a six-day stretch with no games. Normally, he’d go home, but he can’t stand the thought of sleeping in the basement like some… _guest._ So instead, he stays in London feeling bitter about it. Patrick hits up three different Halloween parties in a half-assed Batman costume and drowns his sorrows with Gags by his side. He’s a year younger than Patrick, but eligible for the ‘07 draft by the skin of his teeth, and it’s eight different flavors of unfair that he has thirty pounds on Patrick, plus facial hair to boot. All that is forgivable because Gags is so likable. He’s easygoing, a good wingman, a great passer, and, judging by the accuracy of his Indiana Jones costume, kind of a nerd. They muddle along with their equally unimpressive alcohol tolerances and London doesn’t feel so lonely.

On the days he’s too hungover to work out that week, he whiles away the hours playing with Annie, his host sister. She’s in the first grade, just like Jackie, so naturally, she and Patrick get along famously. 

They’ve been playing divorce with her ski trip barbies for an hour now.

“Patrick?” Annie looks mournfully between Patrick and the dolls, Snowboarder Ken and Mermaid Magic Teresa, now thoroughly divorced. “Can we play just one more?”

It’s the only time she’s ever asked. He exaggerates a put-upon groan and tips over onto his side, cheek smushed into the playroom carpet both to pout and to surrender. “Okay, one more.”

“You’re my favorite,” Annie tells him earnestly, and immediately plunges her arms into the tub of dolls, which is almost as tall as she is, looking for fresh blood. 

Patrick gives her an indulgent grin. Kids are the best. “I’m your favorite?”

She nods. 

“What about your brother, huh?” he teases.

“He’s never even here,” she counters with a businesslike sweep of her arm to push the discarded dolls off the table and into the toy box below. Poor Steven. Annie pauses her hunt for the unlucky groom, resting her chin on the lip of the tub. “I can’t decide.”

“How about this guy?” Patrick plucks out a golden-armored doll he thinks is from ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame.’

Glancing up at him totally unimpressed, Annie says, “We can’t do him. He’s not opposed to get divorced ‘cos of his religion.” It’s the most condescension Patrick has ever received from someone missing three teeth, but he’s a hockey player so the competition is closer than he’d like it to be.

He bites his tongue when she instead selects a battered Obi Wan. He has no clue how she came to own an Obi Wan doll (which she refers to as “Bathrobe Ken”) in the first place, but Patrick has to pick his battles.

After taking the time to carefully comb out Ski Champion Barbie’s ponytail, Annie holds her upright to break the news. “Ken, I wanna see other people.”

When the break ends and the games finally start back up, he thinks the worst of the homesickness is behind him. But on late night bus rides between one unfamiliar city and the next, Patrick feels it even more keenly than before. On the short ride back from Kitchener one night, he sees a road sign for Buffalo and finds himself dialing Erica before he’s even really thought about it.

She answers, sounding happy and relaxed. “Pat!”

“Hey. You busy?”

“Hm? No, I’m just working on French homework with Jonny. I could use a break anyway.” She says the last part pointedly, like she’s ribbing Toews to his face. The familiarity rankles Patrick.

“Toews?” Patrick groans. Just what he needs to be hearing about.

“Yeah, his mom’s _Quebecois,_ ” she pronounces the last syllable like she’s a duck, still being obnoxious to Toews, Patrick imagines. “He’s been a big help, when he’s not on one of his dates.”

“Well isn’t that selfless,” Patrick says, not bothering to hide his peevishness. _‘I tend to go for blondes’_ echoes in his head.

Erica laughs, “You’re such an ass.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Glad to see you’re learning some real original zingers up north, Pat. I was starting to worry that only being around hockey players was gonna dull your brain.”

“Hey!”

Erica cracks up. “You should see Jonny’s face right now,” she says conspiratorially. “He looks so _weird._ Like a murderous flounder or something.” She’s bullying 'Jonny' the same way she’s always bullied Patrick, and it leaves an unbelievably sour taste in Patrick’s mouth. He tries to ignore it, because at least it’s better than her blushing and stammering at Toews the way she used to around Patrick’s friends.

“You’ve got such a way with words, Erica.”

A voice pipes up from the row of seats behind Patrick, “Hey, Kane! That your sister? Tell her I say hi!”

Patrick covers the receiver with his hand. “Shut the fuck up, Kerby.”

Erica catches him up on school gossip and the goings on at home. He can’t ask for dirt on Toews since he’s presumably sitting right across from her, but Patrick figures he’ll have more opportunities.

“I should go soon,” she says, eventually.

“Yeah, okay. Tell Toews to quit coughing the puck up against the boards—he’s big enough to take a hit. Some of us want the Sabres to _win._ ” Patrick hears a distant indignant noise and grins. “See ya, kid.”

“See you at Thanksgiving!”

“Three weeks,” he confirms before hanging up. He feels immeasurably better. Three weeks.

*

The night Patrick turns legal (in Canada), the team goes out to drink Mississauga dry. They are not good at it. It started with birthday shots, celebrating a 4-1 victory over the Steelheads as well as Patrick’s birthday. Now they’re only on their second bar of the night, and the group is already sloppy as hell.

“Where’s Hasser?” Patrick calls to the table while he waits to be served at the bar. He only gets shrugs in response from the few guys who heard him. Hasser’s not the best forward in the game, but he can drink the rest of them under the table. That Swiss motherfucker should be here. Patrick grabs his drink, takes a barstool next to Tits, and whips out his phone to rectify the situation.

“Hello?” Hasser’s voice is deep and quiet, like he’s in a library or some shit.

“Hasser! Where the fuck are you, buddy? It’s my birthday, you’re missing out!”

There’s a pause. “I think you have the wrong number.” There’s no trace of Hasser’s Swiss accent.

“The fuck I do,” Patrick grumbles pulling his phone away from his ear to check the number he called. Where it should show Hasser’s contact info, the screen reads _Home_ in blocky little letters. He’d know that string of numbers anywhere. “What the…”

The voice crackles up weakly from the phone in Patrick’s palm. “Hello?”

“Is this, uh,” Patrick’s spinning brain swims faster to try and catch up with the situation. Don’t sound drunk, don’t sound drunk. “Is this the Kane residence?” Nailed it.

“Yes,” the gruff voice says. It’s definitely not Patrick’s dad. “Can I help you?”

“I meant to—I meant to dial Hasani but I guess I hit Home.”

“... Patrick?”

“What’s up?”

He waits for a question, but the guy on the other end just laughs like Patrick’s said something clever. It occurs to Patrick that he must be Toews.

“Oh,” Patrick says when it clicks. “It’s _youuu.”_

“Sorry?”

“Doubt it,” says Patrick snidely, taking a moment to sip on his Long Island Iced Tea.

There’s a lengthy silence. It doesn’t occur to Patrick’s liquorlogged brain that he could just hang up.

“Well, happy birthday,” Toews says awkwardly. 

“Thank you. It’s a lovely, balmy evening in Mississauga. Tropical,” he rambles.

“Really?” Toews says.

“No.”

“How’s the season going?” Toews asks, all well-rounded Canadian vowels and awkward politeness. If he were more sober, Patrick might have taken delight from putting the guy’s manners through their paces like this.

“Fucking awesome,” Patrick says around his straw. And it’s true. He’s setting the OHL on fire. He slings an arm up to fuck up Tits’ hair. “I was worried. I don’t know why I was worried. How’s _your_ season going?” He asks it sweetly, despite already knowing the answer.

Toews makes a noncommittal noise. 

“Pssssh,” Patrick says. The praise comes out as morose as Patrick feels about it. “You’re having a great season. You started with a ten game win streak for fuck’s sake! Rookie of the month!” Patrick knows because it pissed him off to no end. He’s come close to rooting against his own team. “Your shooting percentage is more than respectable and your skating’s gotten better.”

“Better than what?” Toews demands, sounding peeved.

“Better than when you were thirteen, for sure.”

Toews says something but it’s too quiet to hear over the din of the bar. 

“What?” says Patrick, probably too loud.

“You remember that?”

“’Course.” Patrick’s phone buzzes and he pauses to see the belated birthday text from a Michigan buddy. Belated because it’s half past 2 AM, officially November 20th. He pulls the phone back to his face. “What are you doing up anyhow?”

“Besides saving you from waking up your entire family for a drunk dial?”

“Yeah, besides that.”

“I, uh… I’m not sleeping so good these days, that’s all.”

“That blows,” Patrick says into his glass. “You’re still playing okay though.” Maybe it’s the alcohol, but by this point it’s too much of a chore to keep reminding himself that Patrick hates this guy. He ends up just talking to him instead.

“Except that I’m not playing,” Toews huffs out. “Dunno if you saw our game against Detroit...” Patrick did. “... but I took a pretty bad hit. Knocked my head. And then,” he sighs like he’s admitting something embarrassing, “And then I went into a fugue on the plane back. So now I’m benched. _And_ I can’t sleep,” he adds, as a cherry on top. “So my season could be going better.”

Patrick’s wondering what specifically triggered the fugue, and he doesn’t realize he’s actually asked Toews until he responds.

“Someone’s vaporub, I think. I smell it all the time, but for whatever reason…” he trails off sounding frustrated.

“It’s not like it’s your fault.” Patrick sloppily signals to a bartender for another drink. 

“Why am I talking to you about this?” Toews wonders aloud. “And it kind of is.”

“Nope,” Patrick cuts him off.

Patrick was thirteen and a quarter when his guide potential registered; later than most kids. By that point, he’d already missed most of the Guide Education classes they made you take. In the end, Patrick only had one semester of Guide Ed that he paid absolutely zero attention during. (Not his fault, by the way. The teacher walked in on day one and introduced himself as “Bond. Sentinel Bond,” and Patrick checked out right then and there for his sanity’s sake.) But even Patrick, who’s basically sentinel illiterate, knows what Toews is spouting is bullshit.

“It’s just a matter of focus,” Toews argues. “That’s something I can do, and I didn’t.”

Patrick talks over him, annoyed and frank, “Blah blah blah.”

Toews pauses. “Are you always like this or are you just really wasted?”

“Fuck you, too. Listen, I’m right about this. Fuck, man, being a sentinel doesn’t mean you aren’t _human._ Would you blame a teammate for getting the flu and sitting out a couple? No, you know what, fuck the flu: Would you blame anyone else on the team for getting Kronwall’d like you did and being a little spacey afterwards?” Patrick takes Toews’ silence to mean no. “I get having goals and standards and shit, but acting like you’re above this stuff is kind of a douche move to your teammates. And to yourself, probs.”

Patrick continues, “I mean, be pissed if you want, by all means. I would be. But not because you think you did something avoidable. That’s just…” He searches for the precisely right word. “That’s just _dumb._ ”

“So what? It’s unavoidable, then? It’s just a fact of nature that I’m going to burn out early?”

Patrick takes a long, noisy draw from his straw. Instead of dignifying that with a response, he just exhales loudly, “Whew. You are an astoundingly difficult guy, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Toews says, sounding strangely pleased at the assessment. “Yeah, I know.”

“P Kane!” Gags appears behind him and jerks his shoulders back and forward. “What are you doing over here in the corner? We’ve got another round of shots, birthday bitch! Third time’s the charm!” When Patrick doesn’t immediately get up, Gags turns to the next stool over. “Tits! Tits, tell P Kane to come do his shots.”

“Who the fuck is _Tits_?” Toews asks. 

“Your mom,” Patrick crows. “Smell you later.”

 _“Smell you la—?”_ Patrick cuts him off with a dial tone.

He hops off his barstool, just a little wobbly on the landing. “More birthday shots!”

*

Patrick splutters awake to the sound of Gags’ alarm and a cold, damp towel smacking him in the face. “Wufuck,” he croaks. Once he finds his arms, he makes the poor decision to try sitting up. His head immediately falls to be cradled by his hands.

“What the fuck happened last night?” he asks Gags, who’s milling around their hotel room like Patrick isn’t seconds away from death.

“Birthday shots,” Gags says.

“I remember _that._ What happened after?”

“Uhh…” Gags cracks his neck, thinking it over. “We went to a bar. Round two of birthday shots. Another bar, round three. Air hockey, round four… I think you struck out with a college girl?”

Patrick groans. “I remember the birthday shots,” he repeats. “Two rounds of birthday shots. That might be it.”

He isn’t surprised he didn’t manage to hook up. He did okay over the break, but in general it just hasn’t been at the top of his list. Patrick’s a guy who’s known for a good while now that he’s interested in other guys, but lately every time he sees a dude he’s into all he can think of is how he needs to bulk up. Last week, he had to switch to lesbian porn mid-jerk because his self-conscious envy of the delts on the dude who was topping was wilting his boner.

“Maybe it’ll come back to you, buddy,” Gags laughs.

Patrick downs some aspirin and drains his water bottle. He’s had his share of hangovers, but he hasn’t blacked out this bad maybe ever. “Did we ever find Tits? Or Hasser?”

“We met up with Tits at the second bar. Hasser stayed in, as far as I know.”

“I feel like an old car tire,” Patrick whines. He yawns behind his hand, then wrinkles his nose. “I _smell_ like an old car tire. You done with the bathroom?”

“All yours.” Gags flops himself facedown back onto his bed. 

Patrick rushes through showering, wanting to grab some breakfast downstairs before the bus leaves. Despite being hungover himself, he makes a point of snapping right in front of Tits’ face when he passes his seat on the bus. “Fuck you,” Tits groans, his Belarusian accent thick when he’s this beleaguered. 

He survives the bus ride to London, and then it’s just one more home game until he can drive down to Buffalo for Thanksgiving. Patrick asks not to be told ahead of time who’s in the crowd so he doesn’t get nervous and choke, but he’s aware that more and more scouts are showing up for his games. _Their_ games, really, but Patrick knows it’s for him because there are also more and more agents showing up by his side after his games. It’s surreal, receiving the praise and the schmoozing and the business cards and voicemails. All from the same losers who spent years looking right past Patrick to approach the bigger kids.

Patrick recognizes the one who comes up to him in the locker room after Patrick’s three point game on Wednesday. He’s from a big shot Toronto-based firm and the only words he’s ever said to Patrick before tonight were “excuse me.” Patrick keeps tying his sneakers, content to listen to his pitch from down here. 

The suit’s teeth sparkle hugely through his analysis of Patrick’s overtime game-winner. The agent is grinning because Patrick is grinning, and Patrick is grinning because he’s one more piece of flattery away from saying something really gratifyingly stupid, starting with, “You work on commission, right?” and ending with, “Big mistake. Big. Huge.” (What? Patrick has a television just like everyone else.) 

Patrick was never going to sign anyway, but he does manage to blow the suit off in a more civil, we’ll-be-in-touch way since _Pretty Woman_ ing sports agencies would probably be a bad look for his career. He decided two years ago that if these agents and their hyena-laughs weren’t interested, then neither was he. Patrick would do it all without them and they would be the ones to look back. Sure, he might pick an agency to represent him after the draft, but not a day sooner. None of these jackals was going to claim credit for what Patrick made of himself without them. In spite of them, even. His parents are less confident about him going to the draft unrepresented, though they appreciate the spirit in which the choice was made. Patrick tries not to take it personally, feeling certain that he’ll convince them before all is said and done.

He doesn’t have long at home, because it isn’t technically a break in the schedule. The OHL broke for Canadian Thanksgiving six weeks ago, so one night home is all he gets now. The trip is unexpectedly nice. Just him, his jeep, and the fall sunshine. He hasn’t been home in two months. It shocks him when he realizes he’s almost there. It’s affronting that the trip is so easy and he’s been staying in London all this time. When he pulls up to the house, their little driveway is packed. Between his parents’ cars, plus Toews’ and Erica’s, there’s no room, so Patrick parks on the street and slings his duffle over one shoulder. 

Jackie’s on him before he reaches the front door. “Patty!”

He hefts her up, perpetually surprised by her weight. “Missed you, Jacks.”

“Missed you,” she says into his sweater. 

His mom comes out then to fuss over him. She asks about the drive and his billet family and his birthday and the game last night and—

“Is something burning?” Patrick asks reluctantly.

“Shit,” his mom breathes, and darts back to the kitchen.

Jackie gasps. “Bad word,” she mouths at Patrick.

“Very bad,” he agrees. Then he drops his bag by the door and follows his mom to the kitchen to assess the damage.

“Just the pine nuts,” she assures him. “Everything’s good.”

The stove is packed with assorted pots and pans bubbling away. Normally, his mom just makes scalloped potatoes and salsa and they bring it over to Patrick’s uncle’s house. Clearly, she got ambitious with her menu for the inaugural nuclear Kane Thanksgiving. If Patrick’s not mistaken, she’s got homemade gravy sitting on an unlit backburner.

“Smells good. Can I help?”

“Aren’t you sweet. No, you just got here. Put up your feet, soldier. Besides, it’s only…” She glances at the oven clock and her eyes go wide. “Two o’clock? Shoot!” She pulls something pie-shaped out of the oven and puts something casserole-shaped in. His mom mutters something harried under her breath.

She turns back to Patrick, “Actually, you can help. Could you get the Sister Schubert’s out of the freezer?”

Patrick stands, dusting his hands off on his jeans. “Upstairs freezer or downstairs freezer?”

“Downstairs. Thank you!”

The basement is directly beneath Patrick’s bedroom with the door to its stairs just down the hall. Patrick grabs his duffel and clunks down the steep staircase to the basement at top speed like he has since he was seven, but stops short when he realizes someone else is down there.

Toews is on Patrick’s stationary bike, facing away from the stairs with earbuds in. It’s chilly in the basement, but Toews’ shirt is nowhere to be seen and his hair is dark with sweat. Patrick’s eyes are drawn just beyond the bike, on the far wall, where cardboard boxes store Patrick’s old clothes and CDs and memories, packed and stacked in neat little cubes and shoved into the deepest corner of the house. The golden fist of an inconveniently sized trophy pierces through the cardboard like a zombie escaping the grave. Next to it, thrown haphazardly on top of the box lies Toews’ discarded dirty shirt. Someone’s made himself at home. 

Patrick’s still staring at the boxes when he hears Toews take a deep breath through his nose. Toews immediately sits upright on the bike and turns around. 

“Oh!” Toews huffs. He stalls the pedals and pulls his earbuds out. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.” Patrick’s distracted by a sudden headrush, maybe from the way he rushed down the stairs? There’s this confusing sensation of his brain going to work without him, mind abruptly perked up and seeking something out. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, like walking into a room to get something and immediately forgetting what you were after. 

“It’s all good,” Patrick says once he’s shaken the feeling off. “Just down here to grab some rolls from the freezer.” He readjusts the strap of his duffel on his shoulder and goes over to the pullout couch so he can toss the bag onto it. Toews is watching him. Unsure of what Toews is expecting, Patrick makes an awkward face and says, “How’s it going, man?”

Toews grins at him open and easy, like they’re already good pals, and wipes the sweat from his eyes. “It’s going.”

Toews was placed on IR a couple days ago. Patrick can’t remember where he heard about it, but they were talking about it on one of the hockey shows Patrick listened to on the radio driving down to Buffalo. So it’s weird that Toews is the one to ask him, “How’re you feeling?”

Patrick squints at him, wondering where that question came from. “Fine? How are you feeling?” he asks, guessing that that’s the polite thing to do, so long as he doesn’t voice the ‘weirdo’ at the end of the inquiry.

Toews sighs, getting off the bike and stretching his back. “I’m doing alright.” He finishes stretching his neck and and glances sideways at Patrick like he’s admitting something he feels guilty about. “I’m still not sleeping well.”

“ _Still?_ ” Patrick says to himself. Was he supposed to know about Toews’ sleep habits to begin with?

“Yeah, still.” Toews sighs. “Fucking frustrating.” Dark circles hang beneath his eyes.

Patrick is confused. “Okay?” he says at the same time his mom calls “Patrick! The rolls?” from upstairs. 

“Coming!” Patrick goes to the freezer and finds the Sister Schubert’s buried under ice packs and containers of soup. He shuts the freezer door with his foot and catches Toews watching him again. “Uh, see you out there, man,” Patrick says, at a loss.

Toews smiles at him, too warm and familiar for a guy he barely knows. “Sure.”

Patrick heads back up the steps, unsettled, mouthing ‘What the fuck?’ to himself.

His phone chimes in the kitchen. A text from Meredith reads, _are u in town for thanksgiving??_

And, uh oh. Patrick thought they were on the same page with the whole summer hookup thing. He never felt bad about letting their casual fling vaguely peter out; it made sense for both of them. It never really had to be said out loud: Patrick was bound for London and Meredith was bound for college—the same college as Peter Danforth, an auburn-haired striker on the soccer team who Meredith was clearly into. This didn’t hurt Patrick’s pride, primarily because Patrick was just as into to Peter Danforth as she was. He cradles his phone like a cracked egg, hoping she didn’t get the wrong idea or anything. He doesn’t know what to say and it’s one problem too many for him right now, so he awkwardly tucks his phone away for later and goes to set the table.

Dinner is weird. The way he talks to his parents and the way his sisters talk to him is different. It could be because they’re growing up without him and because his relationship to his parents is irrevocably changing, but it’s easier to just chalk it up to Toews. All the little changes stack up in Patrick’s mind. Between the meal and the chatter and the unshakable strangeness, he feels scattered and overloaded in a way he’s never experienced before. If this is growing up, it fucking sucks.

“How’s the OHL?” Toews says. Patrick looks up from his mashed potatoes and turns to Toews, two seats over at the dining room table.

“It’s different from the USHL for sure. These goalies—”

Patrick’s dad makes a noise then like he’s just thought of something, but his mouth is full of bread. He points at Patrick and swallows his food. “That reminds me, if you boys get a chance, Jonny, I’d like you to talk to Pat about faceoffs, maybe work in the basement a little.”

“Sure,” Toews agrees, caught off guard. He turns back to Patrick, “You were saying about the OHL?”

Patrick stops chewing on the inside of his cheek and glances up briefly at Toews. “It’s fine,” he says, then stuffs his mouth with more potatoes. His mom draws Toews into a conversation about roasting versus steaming vegetables before the thread can be picked back up.

Patrick’s dad passes him a hefty second helping of turkey without being asked. He hasn’t said anything to Patrick about his weight but the turkey is clearly not a suggestion. It puts Patrick in a sulky state of mind he hates. Erica is telling Toews about some TV show Patrick has never heard of. Patrick’s parents are talking about Christmas plans while Jess texts someone under the table (when did she even get a phone?). Patrick is developing a headache, his mind restless and unfamiliar. He does his best to tune it out but he can’t shake this vague feeling of anxiety, like he might have left the grinding wheel in the skate room running. So Patrick spends most of the meal talking to Jackie about these bracelets everyone at school is losing their shit over. She has enough opinions about them to get them all the way through to pie, and Patrick decides then and there to get her a kickass Christmas present. 

After dinner, they split dish duty between the five youngsters in shifts. Patrick sends them up to the playroom to play Wii Tennis while he takes the first shift because he’s a good son. He does more than his share, putting his back into scrubbing the pots. The dish soap by the sink is a different brand than usual. Even at the sink alone, Patrick is scatterbrained and uneasy. He’s been looking forward to being home all month, but it doesn’t feel like he thought it would. He scrubs harder and turns the water hotter so he can focus on that simpler pain instead. 

Once he’s done twice his fair share of the dishes, his knobby knuckles bright red, he dries his hands and heads for the stairs. “Batter up!” he calls as he makes his way down the hall to the little playroom at the end.

“You keep playing,” Toews says to the girls, who are now engrossed in Wii Bowling. “I’ll take the next shift.” His eyes catch on Patrick’s knuckles on his way out. It must be weird to have super vision.

Settled in on the couch by Erica, Patrick watches Jackie demolish Jess at bowling, gradually feeling more centered. By the time they switch back to tennis, Erica looks towards the hallway and sighs. “If I don’t go and help, Jonny will just do the rest himself.” She shakes her head and finishes typing a text.

Patrick narrows his eyes at her. “I’ve been pretty clear about not dating hockey guys, right?” he says without preamble, voice pitched low.

She doesn’t look up from her phone. “I’ve been pretty clear about you not telling me what to do, right?”

“Seriously though—”

“Oh, save it. Trust me, there’s no allure in any of your sweaty teammates, Pat. Though,” she snorts, unladylike, “the one with the weird blonde eyebrows did give me his number when we were in Kitchener.”

Patrick rolls his eyes, because of course he did. “I’m not worried about Kerby. Guys like Kerby are an open book. But guys like Toews can be smooth, alright? Just, be careful.”

Patrick doesn’t trust it, the disarming front Toews puts up. Patrick, guide-adept, can literally _feel_ the insane amount of focus and attention Toews maintains, even through Thanksgiving dinner. It’s completely at odds with the way Toews presents himself, and Patrick thinks he’s two-faced as hell. To give Toews credit though, it is a clever affectation he’s crafted. Personable, just awkward enough to seem genuine and endearing. If Patrick weren’t wise to him, it’d probably charm the hell out of him. 

Erica looks up then and makes a weird face, like she’s biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. “I wouldn’t worry about it.” And then she’s off to the kitchen. 

Not long after, Toews shuffles back in while Patrick is playing Jackie in tennis. Patrick is letting her win and pretending to be a poor sport about it. After she wins the second match in a row, he accuses her of cheating and she beams. 

Erica’s voice floats up from stairs, “Jess! Your turn!” Jess turns to Jackie. “C’mon, Jacks, you can help me dry.” 

Jackie hands Patrick her wiimote. “You’ll get better if you practice, Pat.” She looks so earnest that Patrick has to ruffle her hair. 

“I bet you’re right,” he says.

They scamper downstairs leaving Patrick and Toews in silence. Patrick dithers about the Sports menu with his wiimote, failing to land on an option that piques his or Toews’ interest.

“Did you want to work on faceoffs?” Toews offers.

“Maybe some other time,” Patrick says. He grabs the remote off the coffee table and pulls up the TV Guide. “Mind if I turn it to the Canucks game?”

Toews shrugs.

Patrick tries to focus on the game instead of the weird charge in the room. It’s difficult to ignore, though. That ‘left the stove on’ feeling is nipping at his heels again, strong enough that he checks his pocket to be sure he has his phone. He’s definitely forgetting something, leaving something unattended. Maybe he forgot to lock his car. It makes him antsy and he takes the next TV timeout for a bathroom break. 

Play has already resumed when he gets back. Patrick flops down onto the couch by Toews and leans over him to grab the remote. He punches the volume down a couple notches and settles back into the cushions to watch the carnage. The chippy play continues. Halfway into the third period, out of nowhere, Patrick’s heart starts to race. His nose twitches curiously at this enigmatic scent he’s just now noticing in the air, something like hockey tape, sun-baked basketball court, juniper, and the listerine smell of old fashioned cologne. Weird. He fidgets, wondering what the hell is wrong with him tonight. On screen, Shea Weber launches a bullet at the net and Patrick winces instinctively. 

“Have fun blocking those this year.”

Toews doesn’t say anything, but his eyes are on the screen when Patrick glances over. 

“Toews? Hello?” Patrick’s heart is still pounding away.

Toews’ mouth twitches like he means to respond, but his face is otherwise placid, still as stone. His brows are furrowed and everything clicks together in Patrick’s mind. Toews’ lips moved a moment ago, he isn’t completely gone. But he’s chasing something.

“Aw fuck.” Patrick takes a deep breath, and just acts on instinct. “Toews. There’s nothing that way. Dead end, okay, buddy? Can you hear me?” He carefully places a hand on Toews’ shoulder. 

Not for the first time, Patrick thinks about how monumentally stupid it is for Toews to carry on without a bond. He’s clearly not above needing one, the stubborn jackass. For the first time in his life, Patrick thinks it’s also pretty stupid that he himself never took the time to really learn how to help with this shit beyond one semester of Guide Ed. And that was pass/fail. Patrick has no idea what he’s doing. And this guy is Tier Three. Fuck, which three, again? Smell, vision, and hearing?

“Focus on my voice for a second.” Up close, Toews’ eyes are dark and bottomless in a way Patrick hadn’t noticed before. Black enough that it takes a second for Patrick to discern where his pupils are. The dark circles under his eyes are prominent when his face is still; the lack of sleep really must be getting to him. “Just my voice and my hand. It’s all good, stay with me for a bit, buddy. You’re okay.” Patrick’s barely paying attention to his own words, eyes on Toews’ blown pupils, watching for any changes. The game is still playing quietly behind Patrick’s back. 

“You’re chill, you’re okay. You hear that clock on the wall? Used to be in Jess’ room but it drove her crazy. I used to sneak it back into her room and hide it to piss her off. I think it sounds kind of nice, anyways.” When he takes a moment, Patrick can actually hear the gears move behind the clock face, lining up with the rhythm of Toews’ pulse thrumming under Patrick’s hand. He takes it as a good sign. “Maybe that’s just me, though. Does it annoy you?” A muscle moves near Toews’ right eye. His pupils aren’t quite so dilated anymore. “Hey, who’s got the puck?”

“Kariya,” Toews mumbles, blinking briefly before squeezing his eyes shut and opening them wide again. “Kariya’s got the puck.” He shakes his head minutely and turns to face Patrick, nonplussed.

“Cool,” Patrick says. Crisis averted. He drops his hand from Toews’ shoulder and stands up. 

Toews is staring up at him. “You, um…”

“I’m pretty tired too, actually. Gonna head to bed, I think. See ya.” And Patrick’s out of there. He’d ask if Toews was okay, but Patrick can feel that he’s centered again. Patrick has to get an early start in the morning, and there’s no reason to make a big deal out of whatever just happened. The guy wasn’t even really zoned out yet. He heads for the basement, ignoring the goosebumps rising on his arms. 

He curls up on the pullout bed, baffled by the way his entire body is tingling, and falls asleep to the sound of the clock ticking two floors above him.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s about a week after Thanksgiving when Team USA names the U20 roster for World Juniors. Patrick is ecstatic, even though it isn’t a huge surprise. He and Gags are leading the OHL in scoring. In fact, Patrick’s whole line is going to the tournament. Gags was named to Team Canada and Tits to Team Belarus.

Carter MacLean makes Team USA, as well. Thanks to his time with the USNTDP, Patrick knows just about the entire Team USA roster, but none of them play for the Knights, so he doesn’t really get excited about the tournament itself until he has an away game in Guelph, where Carter plays.

“We’re rooming together, right?” Carter says, sitting next to Patrick in a hallway outside Guelph’s away team locker room.

“You know it, Mack.” Patrick gives him a tired smile. He just had a three point night, including a game-winning goal. And it’s lucky that he has a chance to catch up with Carter after the game since London’s bus driver is late, but Patrick can’t wait to conk out on the bus ride home. His eyelids dip.

“You look so gloomy. Lighten the fuck up, man!” Carter nudges Patrick shoulder to shoulder. “What, is it lonely at the top? ‘Cause I’ll take some of those points off your hands.”

Patrick brushes him off. “You’re doing fine on your own, seems like.” 

He’s sugarcoating it, though. In reality, Carter has hit a plateau. He went in the first round of the OHL draft, seventeenth overall—a full seventy one places above Patrick. And in scouting reports at the end of last season, he was by consensus a top twenty pick for the ‘07 NHL Draft. But he’s coasted instead of surging alongside his fellow top prospects, and his stock is starting to fall. Patrick wonders what the rankings will look like in the spring, when he and Carter are training together in Tampa.

Carter heaves a sigh and melts back against the wall. “I’m trying.” In a lower voice, he adds, “Though being on this team hasn’t exactly helped me out. I should’ve gone to BU after all.”

Patrick side-eyes Carter briefly. It’d be a more forgivable thing to say if Carter were at the top of the roster in Guelph, but he’s somewhere around third on the team in points. He knows Carter’s a good dude, but he’s so full of it sometimes. 

“What would your numbers be at BU?” Patrick asks instead of moralizing.

“I don’t know,” Carter huffs, exaggerating his pout. He seems to pick up on the fact that he’s being ribbed and manages to be a good sport about it. “Better.” He changes the subject, “So how’s life in London? Found a bar that’ll serve your scrawny ass yet?” Carter seems happier to talk about a category in which he cleanly bests Patrick.

Patrick gives him a dead leg. “No point. I’ve been legal for two weeks now.” He flashes Carter a cheeky grin. Though Carter can pass for a college senior, he won’t be legal to drink in Canada for another month. “Mostly hit up parties instead anyways.”

“I bet you’re a hit with the London girls,” Carter drawls, giving Patrick a lingering onceover. From any other teammate, Patrick would take it as a chirp. But there’s always been this subtle charge between him and Carter. The kind of charge that makes Carter’s words sound more like a come-on than sarcasm.

“I do alright,” Patrick says, letting himself glance right back. He doesn’t know when it started, but somewhere during their two years playing together in Ann Arbor, Patrick picked up on the non-buddies interest being quietly broadcasted in his direction. And, to be honest, Patrick’s curiosity has been piqued ever since. Carter’s kind of an idiot, but he’s built and handsome in a country club kind of way. He’s easy to be around. Patrick’s been having thoughts about dudes for as long as he can remember and if he were to get his, um, feet wet, why not try it with a buddy? 

Gags rounds the corner with his gear slung over his shoulder. “I do alright,” he parrots mockingly in a dumb voice, continuing down the hallway towards the exit.

“Better than you!”

“Bus is here. Better grab your shit before it leaves you, P Kane.”

Patrick gets up and stretches his sore legs. Carter stays where he is, leaning lax against the painted bricks. “I guess I’ll see you in Sweden, then.”

“You know it.” Patrick runs his eyes down Carter’s biceps and decides he’s definitely looking forward to it. There were a few close calls in Ann Arbor, drunken nights that could have spiralled into handies if Patrick hadn’t deescalated. He can hear the rest of his teammates leaving the locker room in the distance. “And then Tampa,” he grins.

*

He finds himself hanging out with Gags more as the season goes on, not less like it usually goes when he’s rooming with someone. Gags is easygoing as hell, and they have a lot in common. Both of them are trying to ignore the increasing number of NHL scouts at their games. Both of them are jostling with Tavares for the scoring title. Both of them are spending Christmas Eve travelling to Sweden for World Juniors instead of with their families. Not to mention, Gags’ dad is also a coach. _Their_ coach.

Occasionally, Patrick does miss the days when his dad could come to all of his games. But playing with Gags and Coach Gagner, Patrick is privately happy that he has more separation between his dad and his career. And on some level, he can appreciate the fact that his dad having an NHL team to coach means that Patrick can just be his son. Recently, his dad has been in coach mode with him more because the last four years of Patrick’s life have been building up to the draft, and it’s crunch time. But generally, Patrick thinks they strike a good balance.

“Saw that goal in Windsor the other night. Pretty slick.”

“Thanks. Didn’t think that one would work in a real game, did you?” Patrick is on the Wilsons’ couch. Footage from the game he played three hours ago is paused on the TV as he catches up with his dad on the phone. 

“I had to be wrong some time,” his dad laughs. “Speaking of, I have no clue what the hell I’m going to get you for Christmas. Mom says cigars are a no-go.”

“You’ll figure something out. Maybe one of those hams we always have at Grandpa’s. I’ll take it to Sweden as my carry-on.”

“I wish I could be there to watch you in Sweden, Buzz.”

“That’s alright. The timing’s awful.”

“Jon will be there, anyhow, so maybe he’ll keep you in line.”

Patrick frowns. “What do you mean ‘he’ll be there?’ Like, he’s playing?” He shakes his head a bit, confused. “You’re letting him play for Team Canada?”

“They won’t announce it for a few more days, but yes. He’s been off the bench for a while with focus issues. Since that Kronwall hit back in Detroit. When that forward, whatsisname, got injured and left a spot open on Canada’s U20 roster, Jonny stated his case. Kid wants to play.”

“Yeah, but I thought the whole point of sentinels like him going straight to the NHL was avoiding these kinds of tourneys. Isn’t the sentinel injury rate, like, way higher at these things?” 

The Sabres must know something Patrick doesn’t that makes this decision reasonable. Patrick isn’t working with much information to begin with. He tried to do a little digging on Toews after Thanksgiving, but the information out there on his sentinel sensitivities is sparse. Beyond confirmation that Toews is Tier Three, Patrick couldn’t find any specifics on the guy’s senses or their acuteness on the internet, and Patrick knows that’s not because no one asks. In the interviews he finds where sentinelhood is brought up, Toews dodges the topic almost entirely. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be defined by it. Patrick could understand that.

His dad sighs. “Yes, we like for them to avoid this kind of thing early in their careers to avoid those flameouts and let them get settled in our system. But that’s all to avoid a bust, or triggering some prolonged sensitivity. And…” his dad pauses for a moment, “and, well, to be frank, Buzz, that’s pretty much already what’s happened with Jon.” 

Patrick opens his mouth, sharp and confused words banging at the gate, but his dad cuts him off. “Now, I’m not saying we’re writing him off. But Jon said it to us himself, what does he have to lose? Lindy thinks it might get him out of this rut. I don’t know, but it’ll keep him game-ready without having to send the kid down to Rochester. Can’t think all that change would do his senses any good.”

“As opposed to an _international competition?”_ Patrick asks incredulously. He never told his dad about Toews’ zone-out during Thanksgiving, but Patrick is all too aware of the shaky ground Toews is standing on. 

“What’s got you so upset about this, Buzz? Jon’s the one that wants to go. You worried about facing him on the ice?”

“No!” He isn’t. In fact, he’s been wanting a chance to play against him. But it still seems to Patrick like an unnecessarily risky move for Toews’ career. It’s not like it’s the Olympics or anything. He can’t keep the judgement out of his voice when he says, “I guess it’s his mental health on the line.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” his dad says, but he doesn’t quite manage nonchalance. They both know the risks. His dad changes the subject. “Got an interesting voicemail from Wade Arnott yesterday.”

Patrick pinches the bridge of his nose. He hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with his dad about the offers he’s been receiving from agents. “Can we talk about this at Christmas?”

His dad just sighs. “I’m on your side, Buzz.”

“I know.”

“And this has gotta be a team effort.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Patrick sighs, forestalling the canned coach speech he can feel coming on. His dad coughs in an expectant fashion. Patrick corrects himself, “Yes, sir.”

The conversation leaves him in a funk. To get over it, he volunteers to watch Annie for the afternoon so Mrs. Wilson can go to her book club meeting. Annie’s a pretty sure thing as far as mood boosters go. Lately she’s developed a worrying habit of deciding that she wants to be the doll Patrick just picked, whichever doll Patrick picked, until there are nearly no dolls left for him. This won’t leave him crying at night, but it’s not a great habit for her to bring to school, so Patrick devises a system in which they can pick fair and square.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Barbies and Kens, welcome to the 2006 Draft! It’s a strong draft year, no doubt about it, so let’s get right to it. With the first pick, please welcome to the stage the London Ontario…” 

“... What?” Annie whispers after three seconds of Patrick looking at her expectantly. She’s been busy getting her Betty Spaghettys nice and organized seated amongst the rest of the prospect pool.

“What’s your team name?” Patrick whispers back, covering the troll doll he’s using as Bettman with his hand like it’s a live mic. “The London…”

“The London Annies!” she declares, eyes wide and lit with holy inspiration.

“Please welcome to the stage the London Annies!” Patrick imitates distant cheers and applause, then whispers Annie’s lines into her ear.

She sits up straight and dusts off her Little Mermaid leggings with an impressive measure of primness and authority. “With the first overalls pick in the draft, the London Annies proudly select…” She surveys the prospects with a discerning, almost suspicious eye. Annie hisses to Patrick, “Who’re you gonna pick?”

“I can’t tell you that, c’mon.”

“Help me help me help me—”

“Okay, okay. Well, that Roller Barbie looks like a strong skater. Why don’t we go with her?”

“I like her skirt!”

“Well there ya go, then.”

“London Annies select Barbie!” Annie crows, snagging Roller Barbie.

“First overall to London is Roller Barbie, a promising right winger currently playing with Boston College. She’s got a history of, uh,” Patrick eyes the telltale tooth marks above the doll’s knee pads where the dog must have gotten her, “leg injuries, but this young prospect makes up for it with an incredible offensive ceiling.” He turns to Annie, “Isn’t that right?”

The seven-year-old eyes him for a long moment. “You’re really weird.” She goes back to combing Roller Barbie’s pigtails.

Why does Patrick even bother? Just for that, Patrick drafts the Mermaid Magic Teresa he knows Annie likes second overall. While Annie’s whining about it, he tells himself that his selection was made to demonstrate the overarching lesson of this whole exercise about sharing. Then to make up for it in the second round, the Buffalo 88’s proudly select a What’s Her Face doll because Annie doesn’t seem to want her (plus Patrick feels confident that she’d be a highly adaptable two-way forward). 

“The Annies pick Robin!” Annie flies Steven’s old Robin action figure over to sit with her team as the London Annies’ historic first male draft pick, seventh overall. 

Patrick frowns. Not to shoot himself in the foot here, but, “You don’t want Batman?”

“Robin’s cooler. He’s the guide. You can have Batman if you want him,” she adds magnanimously. 

Patrick thinks the bonded pair really ought to be on the same team, but Annie’s making a very grown-up sharing gesture, so he takes it. Plus, Batman, duh. Obviously a kickass defender. “You think the guide’s cooler, eh?”

“Duhhh. Mom’s totally the coolest. So Robin’s the coolest, too. London Annies pick Belle.”

“Wait, your Mom’s a guide?”

“Uh-huh, and Dad’s the sentinel and they’re in love,” she explains. In a way, it’s a blessing that Patrick found out from a seven-year-old; she’s likely the only one who wouldn’t judge a guide-adept for not noticing that he’s been living with a bonded pair for three months. 

Patrick is so bad at this. He always has been. His guide junk registered so late, at the ripe old age of thirteen, and even when it did register, it was way on the low end of the spectrum. As a hopelessly competitive kid, Patrick would be lying if he said it didn’t piss him off to not be in the 99th percentile at something. He knows a couple legit guides. One kid back at Huron could tell when you were zoning out even if you weren’t a sentinel. He’d snap at Patrick from across the library table without even looking up, which was super annoying but also a major factor in Patrick passing Bio. Guides like that have this way about them that makes you think they can read your mind. Patrick certainly can’t do any of that, but then again, unless you have the puck, Patrick’s not really interested in reading your mind anyways. It’s shit like this that makes the whole thing with Toews zoning on the couch even weirder in retrospect, but it’s all Greek to Patrick. 

“Huh.” He realizes Annie’s waiting on him and hastily adds, “Uh, Buffalo 88’s pick Phoebus. Or is it against his religion to play hockey?”

*

The OHL breaks for the holidays a week before Christmas. The pullout couch isn’t so bad, even though Patrick can’t find where his mom tucked his softest pair of blue sheets after Thanksgiving. In a way, the basement is a step up from his bedroom because he’s got a TV and a fridge down here.

He sleeps like a log his first night home, but wakes up earlier than usual, his mind already too clear and aware to consider falling back asleep. It’s hard to tell what time it is just by looking around. The row of slim, wide windows near the ceiling of the basement are mostly blocked by snow, letting a light wash of winter light into the room from the uncovered top two inches. A hair past sunrise. Patrick checks his phone and groans. Way too early. But he’s too alert to slip back into sleep, so he pulls a pair of sweatpants on over his boxers and pads upstairs in search of food and possibly video games. Christmas-tree-smell is wending its way all around upstairs, and since it isn’t accompanied by the smell of coffee, Patrick’s parents must still be asleep.

When Patrick rounds the corner to the kitchen, he’s startled to find Toews sitting at the counter, though no part of it should be surprising. Of course when Patrick crawls upstairs first thing in the morning to find pop tarts and video games, Toews is already knee-deep in a book, enjoying a mug of green tea. Ugh, god, what a douche. 

“Morning,” Patrick mumbles. Upon second glance, he notices the book Toews is reading is titled _The Mind of a Sentinel: The Mind of a Winner,_ and it’s hard to resist rolling his eyes. It’s not like Patrick sits around all day reading _101 Ways Patrick Kane Is Better than You._

He already knew Toews would be here for the break, lacking the good grace to go back to Manitoba and inflict himself on his own family’s Christmas. Instead, his family would fly out to meet Toews at the WJC and celebrate the holidays with him in Sweden. In the meantime, he could continue going to Sabres practices.

“Good morning.” Toews looks a little caught-out, eyes flicking between Patrick and his book.

Patrick reaches into the cabinet above the coffee maker to grab a pack of strawberry pop tarts and sticks them in the toaster oven. He leans back on the counter to wait, and for a long moment, the only sound is the ticking of the toaster as it heats up at a glacial pace. When he cracks his neck, his eyes slide over and catch Toews watching Patrick before his focus flits away.

“What time did you get in yesterday? Must’ve been late.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says as he wipes the sleep from his eye with a pinky. “Had a buddy’s birthday to go to. Barely made it.”

He’s content to let the small talk peter out, but Toews persists. “Hey, so, no one ever mentioned to me that you were a guide. That’s cool.” 

Patrick shrugs, wishing he’s just taken his poptart upstairs cold. “Not a big deal.”

“Normally I can tell when I meet someone,” Toews says conversationally.

“I’m probably just not that gifted in that area. Not something I really use.” Patrick never has much cause to talk about it, and he’s not feeling particularly inclined now. Not with this guy, who doesn’t have so much as a provisional bond with a family member. It makes a hell of a statement. Patrick isn’t sure whether it says more about Toews’ stubborn independence or the way he views guides, but carrying on without any type of bond as a Tier Three is a bold move for someone in Toews’ position. Neither reason is flattering for Toews or trust-inspiring. 

It just doesn’t make sense to avoid a bond otherwise. Ever since Annie clued Patrick in on the fact that her parents were a bonded pair, Patrick has been paying more attention to their relationship, the easy way they move around each other, the way they’re always seeking each other out. It isn’t anything Patrick needs in his life, but in his opinion, it seems… nice. Codependent, but nice.

As Toews is opening his mouth, Patrick’s dad strides in wearing his Sabres tracksuit. He makes a beeline to the coffee maker. 

“Morning, boys. You ready for practice, Jon? Been a while since we’ve had one, eh?” 

After a little catching up with his dad, Patrick and his poptart retreat to the playroom. It’s a decent lazy day. The girls have school, so he has the house to himself. He vegges out, gets on the stationary bike, then vegges out some more. 

He’s in the kitchen making sandwiches when Toews gets in from team practice. Patrick hears him knock the snow from his boots and drop them by the door, and then he shuffles inside looking like absolute shit. 

“Hey man. How was practice?” God, Toews looks pitiful.

“Fine,” Toews mutters, sliding past Patrick to grab a mug. Patrick can smell the rink on him, the locker room shampoo.

Patrick’s eyes narrow as he inhales again. There’s a hint of... 

“Dude, did you… did you throw up?”

Toews’ hand clenches on the mug’s handle, but his voice is even when he responds. “No.” His eyes are set on the selection of teas in the cupboard. He drops a bag into his mug.

Patrick softens his voice. “It smells like throw up.”

Toews attempts a flippant shrug as he fills the mug with water. “Don’t know what to tell you.”

Patrick isn’t buying it. “Everything… okay?”

Toews has the gall to eye him like Patrick is the one being weird right now and breathes a testy little “yeah,” like it’s self-evident. He then proceeds to bluster off to his (Patrick’s) room. If Toews notices that the mug he’s carrying off is just cold water with a teabag in it, he doesn’t come back out to fix it.

It’s easy to give Toews space after that. Patrick has his own agenda of last minute Christmas shopping and catching up with old friends. Meredith texts him again, and she’s smoking hot, but Patrick doesn’t have time to deal with whatever misconception she has about the two of them.  
Well, he has time. It’s just awkward and he doesn’t know what to say. He can always do it tomorrow.

Wednesday morning, Patrick is frustrated to find that he’s still waking up too goddamn early. He’s never had trouble sleeping in before, but at least it might make adjusting to the time difference in Sweden easier. Even from down in the basement, he can hear the chaos of the house getting ready for the day. Coffee maker, weather forecast, second and third alarms, water pipes complaining in the walls. 

Despite his best efforts to go back to sleep, Patrick’s up for good now and grabs his dopp kit to brush his teeth upstairs. He’s got a tube of this specialty strawberry toothpaste, a gift he received from his host mom in a really thoughtful goodie basket she gave him before Christmas Break. The toothpaste is all natural, the color of sidewalks, and it tastes like absolute crap. Naturally, he’ll try to get as many of the girls as he can to try it before the holiday is over.

It’s 7:20 AM on a school day, and, as expected, when Patrick nears the door of the hall bathroom, he can hear Erica rifling through the drawers inside. Since Patrick moved out in middle school, it’s become the girls’ overflow bathroom during the school day rush. According to Jessica, the lock was finally taken off the door last spring after the girls hit a critical number of tardies at school.

With extra relish to make up for all the times the damn door was locked while Erica fixed her hair, Patrick busts in without hesitation. “Yo Erica, you’ve gotta try this toothpaaaa…”

Jonathan Toews is caught stretched in a dramatic fashion, frozen in the act of putting on deodorant with only a damp towel clinging to his hips for dear life. His sleepy eyes are wide and startled. Fresh heat hits Patrick’s face and he can’t tell if it’s embarrassment or shower steam. For once in his stupid life, Patrick can’t make his body react in time. He is glued to the doorway, eyes caught on the curves of Toews’ musculature, shamefully gliding down along the planes of his chest. He can’t look away from the steam clouding off Toews’ golden skin then dispersing like fog when the sun has just come out. Right on cue, Toews flinches in belated reaction to being barged in on, and his towel gives up the good fight, smacking against the tile in defeat. 

Patrick tries to excuse himself, only managing a weak noise. The long lines of Toews’ form must be seared onto his retinas by now. “My, uh… my bad.” He hopes his voice doesn’t break as much as he feels like it does.

Toothpaste absently squeezing out all over his clenched fist, Patrick turns on his heel and makes for the stairs, failing to even close the door behind him. In the solitude of the upstairs bathroom, he goes through the motions of brushing his teeth, still wooden with shock. 

He gives a delayed “blech!” He was so distracted he accidentally used the gross strawberry toothpaste. 

Of course, it’s not a big deal. Patrick has seen every one of his teammates naked, it’s just a part of the lifestyle. It’d be a bit easier to laugh off if he and Toews were buddy-buddy. Even easier if Toews wasn’t… if he didn’t look like that. Patrick gets distracted by that thought for a long moment, toothbrush paused in his mouth. 

Someone bangs on the door. “Hurry up in there! I need the straightener!”

“Where was this dedication to hair care when I needed it?” Patrick snaps back.

“Huh?” 

Patrick shakes his head, rinses his mouth out, and vacates the bathroom, leaving the toothpaste on the counter. “All yours.”

Erica looks distantly curious, but she doesn’t have time to chat. As Patrick meanders back down the hall, he pauses just in time to hear, _“AUGH!_ Wha the hew ith this shit, Pat?!”

Heh. Silver lining. 

He doesn’t see Toews again until the following morning. Patrick is watching _Elf_ with Jackie in their PJ’s. This would be quality time, except Jackie has apparently taken a shine to their foreign exchange douchebag.

The minute Toews passes through the living room, she demands his attention. “C’mere, Jonny!” She was still shy around Toews when Patrick was home in November, but at some point in the last month, she appears to have adopted him as a pet. “Sit here! Watch this.”

Toews looks bemused but complies. Patrick can’t help but notice how the stretched collar of his worn down t-shirt leaves the warm dip of Toews’ collarbone exposed on one side. Toews has more neck than he knows what to do with and it’s only made more distracting by the generous curve of his back muscles peeking out behind it. Above his clavicle, the power of Toews’ body is hinted at by the dramatic downward angle of his trapezius muscle from his neck to the edge of his shoulder. Between the muscle’s ridge and the graceful line of his collarbone, a hollow is formed. Water would pool there— 

Patrick has to pinch his thigh with the hand tucked in his sweatpants pocket and force himself to focus on the movie. He’s spent the last month haunted by every billet sister story he’s ever heard. But billet brothers are also a thing, Patrick knows, even though those aren’t stories that get told. And this particular billet brother is becoming kind of a problem.

“Jonny you have to _watch_ ,” Jackie nags periodically, but Toews doesn’t seem to mind. She’s got him trained already. 

Patrick glances over to where Toews is sprawled on the opposite side of the couch and, unbidden, his mind conjures a vision of the whole tableau sans sweatpants. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Apologizing for barging in on Toews’ naked ass would probably be weirder than just moving on, so Patrick keeps his lips zipped and his eyes on Will Ferrell. Will Ferrell will see him through. Will Ferrell will… sneak into the women’s bathroom to sing ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ while Zooey Deschanel is showering. Patrick was born under the unluckiest star.

“Jonny you aren’t looking,” Jackie whines, tugging on Toews’ arm. “You have to watch, this is the _funny_ part,” she says.

Toews’ face looks as tight as Patrick’s feels when he turns it to the TV screen. Zooey Deschanel screams and Will Ferrell runs smack into a wall with his hands over his eyes. It’s simply too much and Patrick can’t help but crack up at this stupid situation. Toews peeks at him out of the corner of his eye and huffs a little helpless laugh of his own. They share an awkward, incredulous grin, and Patrick manages to relax and watch the rest of the movie like a normal person. 

Time moves quickly and all too soon it’s Patrick’s last night home. He needs his sleep because it’ll be a long day of travel tomorrow, but he can’t drift off. He tosses around on the pullout bed for the better part of an hour before surrendering and pulling a sweatshirt on.

The air is brisk when he makes it out to the driveway, but it’s pleasant in its familiarity. Patrick’s just messing around with the puck in the glow of the floodlight. He likes to take chalk from the garage, pick a brick, mark it, and see how many times he can get it in a row. He’s been doing it for years. Tonight, seven is the number to beat.

He’s been out there for at least half an hour when his ears prick up. The garage door closes, and Toews rounds the corner, looking just barely sleep-rumpled in a sweatshirt and flannel pants. Patrick looks down at his stick and the puck he’s been shooting at the wall, and realizes his mistake.

“Fuck, I didn’t mean to wake you up, dude. My bad. Just second nature when I can’t sleep.”

Jonny waves a hand at him. “You didn’t wake me up.”

Patrick slides him a dubious look. He nods his head towards the brick he’s been pummeling “That has to sound like a damn cannon when you’re trying to sleep.”

Toews shrugs. “There’s a kid a couple blocks down who’s at it all hours. Shoots at a trash can. I’m used to it.”

Patrick’s eyebrows lift in recognition. “Oh yeah. Stick around long enough and you’ll meet him. Terrible shot in shinny. Terrible.”

Toews grins. “Well he hits that trash can often enough.”

“Then he probably isn’t aiming for it,” Patrick shoots back, setting up the puck again. “What’s keeping you up, if it isn’t the percussion?”—which Patrick still highly doubts. 

“Same thing as you, I’d bet.”

Patrick hits the brick with a wry grin, imagining Jonny being kept awake by the thought of his own ass. But then, that’s not what’s really keeping Patrick up, either. World Juniors are an important showcase for both of them, just in very different ways. If Patrick pulls it off, it’ll be a high profile showing, not just of what he can do, but of what he can do independent of Gagner and Kostitsyn. And if Toews pulls it off, it could be his ticket back onto NHL ice. 

“Grab a stick, then,” Patrick says, nodding his head towards the garage. 

They take turns with the puck, devising increasingly difficult targets. The rhythm of it is soothing. Patrick should drop off easily when they turn in. He’s about to hit the mark for the seventh time in a row, shattering Jonny’s lead, when he’s ‘accidentally’ jostled into.

“Cheating,” Patrick says, sending Jonny a dirty look.

Jonny is unrepentant. “If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying hard enough.”

Patrick rolls his eyes but lets it go. “Got an early start tomorrow?” Patrick asks, nailing the chalk mark.

“Not too bad.”

“I’m still kind of surprised you’re going, to be honest,” Patrick says, biting his lips red.

Toews raises his eyebrows as he takes his next shot.

Patrick intends to make some light hearted chirp about wiping the floor with Team Canada. “I just… is it smart?” is what comes out of Patrick’s mouth instead. “It seems reckless.”

In the chilly air, Patrick’s haphazard words form white clouds that take their time dissipating. He briefly entertains the irrational notion of sucking them back in. Well, at least Patrick said ‘reckless’ and not ‘batshit crazy stupid.’

Toews straightens and looks Patrick hard in the eye. “The team wouldn’t let me go if it was a bad call.” His fingers clench around the stick defensively like Patrick’s going to try and take it away from him.

“I’m not talking about what’s good for the team, I’m talking about what’s good for you. Seems short-sighted, is all I’m saying.” Patrick waves a dismissive hand and makes himself shut up on the issue. If Toews wants to retire at age eighteen just because he’s too impatient to wait out his fugue-prone slump, then that’s Toews’ business. “So who’re you rooming with?”

Toews ignores the subject change, unwilling to let Patrick’s disapproval go. “I need to get back on the horse sometime and the team isn’t going to risk it in NHL games right now. I’m not going to sit on my ass while my chance to prove I can handle this passes me by.”

When Patrick doesn’t react, he plows onward. “I’m ready,” Toews insists. “The team is just being obnoxiously careful. I had _one_ fugue, and it was over a month ago! I don’t know why they’re still dragging their feet.”

Patrick scoffs at the way Toews glosses right over his little episode on Thanksgiving Day. He understands the impatience, but Toews isn’t going to convince Patrick that this is a smart idea. Especially since the same dude wouldn’t even own up to puking after practice the other day.

Toews narrows his eyes at Patrick like he can read his thoughts. “You didn’t tell your dad about that time on Thanksgiving, did you?” he asks sharply.

Patrick tries not to gape in offense, but it’s difficult. “What do you take me for?”

Toews immediately follows up his first question. “Did you tell him about the throwing up?”

“Ha!” Patrick exclaims with a vindicated finger-jab. “You _did_ barf!”

“Did you tell him?” he presses, face intent on Patrick’s. Patrick hasn’t had the highest opinion of this guy or been especially friendly, but he’s still taken aback that Toews’ own opinion of Patrick is apparently so low.

“No, I didn’t fucking _tattle_ on you,” Patrick sneers. “If you wanna lie to the professionals trying to keep you in one piece, that’s your business.”

“Well it certainly _seems_ like you’re okay with butting into my business.”

“Fair enough,” Patrick concedes with as little charity as possible. “Your career,” he says, but it sounds like, _‘Your funeral.’_ He resumes shooting the puck at the brick wall.

“Well thanks for the free career advice,” Toews spits, failing to keep his pissiness lighthearted.

“I’ll shut up,” Patrick puts a hand up in surrender. He shouldn’t have pushed it to begin with, but he can _feel_ Toews teetering on a knife’s edge, and it feels like the bigger evil would be to ignore it. “Just… pretending you aren’t a sentinel won’t do you any favors.”

Toews doesn’t take that well. “You pretend you aren’t a guide.” He launches a shot squarely on target.

“I’m not a guide,” Patrick responds immediately. 

He can feel the heavy look Toews fixes him with like a weight on his chest. “I’m not a guide,” Patrick says again. “I have guide potential.” His shot is wide. 

Toews lets out a dry laugh. “Okay, yeah,” he agrees sarcastically. “See, when you’re born with an ability, it’s just an option for you. What I was born with basically becomes my first name.”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “Don’t pretend there isn’t a difference. And just because I don’t announce it doesn’t mean I’m _hiding_ being guide adept. I’m not ignoring it to make shitty career decisions. It just doesn’t come up. Was I supposed to feel obligated to announce myself to you? Is that my duty as—”

“It just seemed fucking weird! There’s barely any of us in the pros, and it’s so much weirder that you didn’t mention it. Or, like, any of your family, for that matter. I have to zone right next to you to find out? I don’t know what the deal there is, and that’s your business. Just don’t preach to me about denial.”

Patrick clenches his jaw and his stick. But this has gone on too long already. “Look, let’s just drop it, man. I wasn’t trying to preach.”

Instead of shaking Patrick’s hand or something awkwardly polite like that, Toews huffs, “Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say: Drop it. You’re making it sound like I’m the one with a problem, here.”

Patrick squints disbelievingly. “You wanna fight about who wants to fight?” Touchy, much?

Toews rolls his eyes, apparently done with Patrick. “I’m going to bed,” he announces with no small amount of salt. 

What an asshole. That’s what Patrick gets for listening to his conscience. He takes his last shot at the wall and imagines he can see actual brick dust fly up upon contact. When this all goes to shit for Toews, Patrick will be right there to say _I told you so._

*

It sucks to be travelling on Christmas Eve but at least it’s with Team USA. Lots of familiar faces from the USNTDP with exaggerated stories to catch Patrick up on. It’s good to see old teammates like JVR and Gerbe. Inwardly, Patrick resolves to stand next to Gerbe in all the team photos (and probably steer clear of Erik Johnson, whose unsportsmanlike pituitary gland never learned to stop when it was ahead—like okay we get it, you’re tall).

Carter’s one of the last to arrive at the gate. They spend the flight making up for lost time and making lofty plans for their postseason romp in Florida. Perhaps an unadvisable pastime, since they’re on a flight to Stockholm, not Tampa, and Sweden is in the middle of its brutal winter. They never end up seeing much outside of the hotel and rinks, at any rate.

Christmas morning is weird as hell. For starters, Patrick wakes up in a hotel room like McCaulay Culkin. Instead of the frozen danish his family receives every year from their neighbors, he has an omelette from the hotel buffet, which is nominally decent but feels wrong nonetheless. The whole team was visited by Santa, who’s really into Team USA merch, apparently. They’re huddled around a few tables in the dining room shooting the shit about who managed to get a Wii (and a decent number of controllers) for Christmas and who didn’t. Patrick looks up from his orange juice and notices Team Canada trickling in. There’s some pleasantries and good-natured not-so-pleasantries as guys pass their table on the way to the hot buffet. Patrick spots Toews’ aggressively featureless posture the moment he walks in. He comes to loom over Patrick with a couple teammates in tow. 

Patrick says a quick “Hey, man,” to Toews and nods at the guys behind him, the redheaded Staal and a forward from Saginaw whose name is escaping Patrick (but Patrick’s pretty sure he shoots right). 

“Hey,” Toews says, face and intonation stony. “Your mom says not to forget the Christmas stuff she packed for you.” Looks like someone hasn’t gotten over their spat.

Immediately to Patrick’s right, there’s the sound of a chair scraping back. “What’d you say about his mom?” Carter says, all puffed up. 

Down the table, guys lean over to see what’s going on. Patrick rolls his eyes, fisting a hand in Carter’s hoodie to keep him from standing up like a buffoon.

“Chill, spaz,” Patrick says to Carter in an undertone. “He’s billeting with my family in Buffalo.”

Carter colors and settles back into his seat. “Oh.” Toews is still staring at Carter, face unimpressed. “My bad.” 

“How’s our Christmas feast, here, boys?” says Saginaw, congenial and sleepy. 

“Not too bad,” says Patrick, grateful for the subject change. “I recommend the omelet. Skille’s the only one who’d try the fish paste, so you’ll have to ask him about that.” Johnson’s the other standout, plate piled high with liver paté and bell pepper slices. Patrick is simultaneously disgusted and tempted to copy him just in case paté’s the secret ingredient to being 6’4”.

The Canadians all wrinkle their noses and shuffle towards the buffet line to beat the sudden influx of Finns. 

“Hey,” Patrick says, remembering to tell Toews about the little Christmas present his mom had packed for him in Patrick’s bag. But Toews keeps walking like he didn’t hear. _That won’t hold up in court, you bat-eared bastard_ , Patrick thinks, beyond peeved at the brush-off. _No Christmas present for you, then._

It carries on like that, the cold shouldering. Which is fucking stupid because it’s not like they would have really interacted much in the first place. Team Canada isn’t seen in the dining rooms after that first morning because, as Patrick learns from Gags, they brought their own private chef. At the very most, Patrick and Toews briefly pass each other in the hallways between the locker rooms. Toews brushes past him, chin up, eyes straight ahead. Patrick cannot believe how immature the guy is being about this, fucking sensitive weirdo. “Whatever, hater,” Patrick mutters under his breath.

Patrick’s second game of the tournament is a prelim against Canada. It blows. Toews scores twice and looks so smug when he flies by Patrick on the bench that it makes Patrick grind his teeth. Patrick _never said_ Toews wouldn’t play well. It’s not like he was rooting for the fucker to fail (though, if the attitude keeps up, Patrick might consider it). By contrast, Patrick is off his game, distracted and unable to get a shot away. 

Team USA loses 6-3 and Patrick nearly punches Toews in the handshake line. He hasn’t even removed his gloves yet and he’s got this little superior quirk to his brow that makes Patrick want to scream because Patrick was never betting against him in the first place! The mischaracterization makes Patrick squeeze Toews’ glove just a little too hard on the shake, but it only seems to increase Toews’ self-satisfaction. _This doesn’t prove anything!_ , Patrick wants to yell. _I’m not your Disney villain, and none of this negates the pointless risk you’re taking! Eat shit and die!_

In the name of sportsmanship and international diplomacy and all that jazz, Patrick has to swallow it and lumber off the ice. Patrick can’t believe he was concerned about that guy.

It’s just so fucking childish, Patrick thinks. I mean, why would Toews even take Patrick’s words so seriously? And it’s just further proof that the guy isn’t the mild boy scout everyone thinks he is. Like, first he’s mega sensitive about everything Patrick says, then he’s straight up ignoring him like a kindergartener, and now he’s projecting smugness as if Patrick even cares. As if Toews’ play factors into Patrick’s day at all. As if Patrick even thinks about it in the following week. Please. And sure, Toews has been playing fine, but that was never the point. And even if it were some sort of competition between them, Patrick is reserving judgment until they play against each other in the semis tomorrow because—

“Hey,” Carter croons. “I heard Skille snuck in some vodka. Wanna see if we can steal some? I’ll distract them and you—”

“Hm?” Patrick flexes his jaw, still stewing. “Nah, I’m good.” It’s just that, in spite of the antagonism, Patrick fiercely wants Toews at the top of his game so that when Patrick smokes him, it’ll be all the sweeter. Just for the look on—

The lights go off, and Patrick hears a dull “okay” from Carter’s side of the room. It takes Patrick a minute to realize, but there’s a 90% chance he just turned down a roundabout invitation to fool around with Carter. Patrick hasn’t gotten his dick touched in ages. He thunks his head back on the pillow in frustration. Is there anything about this tournament Toews won’t ruin for him?

*

The answer is no. No there is not.

The semifinal against Canada is unlike any game Patrick has ever played. He’s unusually antsy during the anthems, but this is the most important game of his career thus far, after all. Still, the game starts out normally enough. It’s chippy, it’s contentious, and it’s high stakes, but Patrick is dialed in. He’s been on fire ever since the prelim against Canada, leading Team USA in points, and the buck won’t stop here. 

It might be nerves, but halfway through the second period, Patrick starts to slip, belatedly realizing he’s out of position, feeling like he’s one step behind the play. He parks himself in position for a defensive zone faceoff and fiddles with his mouthguard. He’s trying to clear his head, but this left-shooting Canadian clunker starts getting mouthy with him. 

He looks Patrick up and down with a snotty laugh. “Look at you, two-seven. On a diet or something, sweetheart?” The winger throws his weight in close to Patrick as they lean in, waiting for the puck to drop. “You aren’t worth half a roster spot.”

Patrick doesn’t take his eyes off the puck in the ref’s hand. “You aren’t worth the knockoff Oilers jersey you were conceived in, you fucking pylon.” 

And then the puck has dropped and it’s on Patrick’s tape in a heartbeat. He generates some chances, trying to power through the weird static in his brain. Normally, pulling off a couple flashy maneuvers is enough to get rid of Patrick’s nerves, but the weirdness won’t go away. On the bench, he whiffs some smelling salts trying to snap out of it. 

There’s this undercurrent of unsteady anxiety beating without sense or rhythm and Patrick cannot shake it. On the ice, Toews loses a draw and puts his head down to chase the puck. Patrick notices Toews shaking his head like Patrick’s been doing, trying to clear it. And then Patrick sees one of the tiny, flesh-colored earplugs fall to the ice. 

And that’s when shit gets weird.

Toews gets the puck back and moves to pass it, but there’s no one from his team in the direction he’s looking. Patrick can tell he’s only half present now. Toews corrects himself and gets the puck to Bourdon, reacting a hair too slowly, totally unaware of the USA forward coming straight for him. It’s only by the thinnest margin that Toews avoids bearing the full brunt of Abdelkader plowing him into the boards. 

While play moves on, Toews looks after Abdelkader dazed before moving to get back in position. This isn’t a low stakes predicament he’s in. If Toews takes a hit to the head while his brain is out to lunch, he could be reduced to a vegetative state. Permanently. There’s _precedent._

Patrick needs to be paying attention to the actual game, but he can’t. His nose stings; he’s frowning hard enough to pull at the visor cut on the bridge of his nose that he picked up last game. Toews comes to the bench for a line change and gets a replacement earplug from the equipment manager, but it doesn’t do anything to reestablish his equilibrium. Patrick can feel it; his own brain is spinning out like it’s been split into four pieces. Toews is on the edge of the abyss, but his team physician doesn’t appear to notice _at all._ The official spotter standing behind Canada’s backup goalie isn’t even looking at Toews.

Given Toews’ personality and sense of self-preservation, it’s no surprise that he takes the ice for his next shift without hesitation, a determined crease dividing his brow. Determination aside, Toews can’t get back into his groove. He looks stiff and tentative on the ice, like he’s bracing for the jumbotron to fall on them all at any moment.

Canada ices the puck and Patrick goes over the boards like he’s told. Toews is locked up at the dot, rigid and shaky all at once. He glances over in Patrick’s direction, and the raw trepidation there is enough to bring Patrick up short. It’s worlds away from the obstinate steel Toews wore outside Patrick’s garage. 

There’s no joy in being right, Patrick finds. And it’s not like he can drag Toews off the ice by his ear. So Patrick takes a deep breath to steady himself and does the only thing he can: he plays the game. 

The puck drops, play starts, and somewhere between one breath and the next, Patrick has the reins to his own skull again. It takes pure force of will, but he sorts through the distractions and maneuvers himself around the choreography of players as only he can. He’s setting up a shot feeling like he’s three moves ahead of everyone else when the puck is suddenly picked cleanly out from under him. It’s the back of Toews’ jersey that’s skating off into Team USA’s defensive zone and Patrick finds himself inexplicably smiling.

The game that follows is exhilarating and strange. Suddenly, it’s like Patrick is flying, and Toews is too. Familiar goosebumps bloom up Patrick’s arms. He can feel Toews as they navigate the rink, both steady and tuned into the action, even in opposition. It’s that bulletproof feeling Patrick has only had brief tastes of in the past: he knows how the puck will bounce, he knows where people are going, he knows every single variable. His brain races on ahead of him and Patrick can only follow. 

Toews is in rare form as well. Patrick thought he might be able to use this awareness of Toews to his advantage, but Toews is right there with him. A string of cross-checks and steals and uncannily intercepted passes follows. Patrick pants between shifts, admiring the single-minded brute force driving Toews’ play. He’s forced to wonder, breathless even in his own mind, _Fuck, now imagine if we were on the same team._

Patrick knows what’s going on, even if he didn’t mean to do it. He’s aware that he’s guiding Toews somehow. But it isn’t until the third period that it occurs to Patrick that he’s essentially helping the other team. His eyes are boring into the ice watching Canada’s power play unit enter the zone, watching Toews architect a beautiful play out of thin air. This is how good Toews really is; Patrick isn’t making him better, he’s just lifting the mental baggage and getting a good look at how Toews plays when he’s unfettered. Toews powers through the middle, single-handedly plowing through defenders like he’s got the puck on a magnet. Three full seconds before it happens, Patrick knows it’s a game-tying goal. 

The stadium erupts. Feeling apprehension flood Team USA’s bench, Patrick chomps on his mouthguard, prickling with guilt. He’s unsure of how to stop now. It’s happening so fast. And what if he did know how to stop? Would Toews be left in the same lurch Patrick found him in? Two moves away from getting knocked clean out mid-ice while his mind travels to Jupiter and his career goes down the toilet? Patrick does his best to elevate his own play to make up for whatever advantage he might have given Team Canada, but they’re still tied at the end of regulation. And then at the end of overtime. 

Nothing could have prepared him for the shootout that comes next. Patrick’s heart is in his throat the entire time, pumping twice the adrenalin he needs through his veins. Patrick imagines he can _hear_ the adrenalin as it laces his blood. He feels like he can hear each distinct person cheering in the crowd, dialled back to a gentle volume and weaving over and under one another is some strange, intricate harmony. 

The problem with the shootout isn’t that Patrick loses his cool. The problem is that he keeps steady. Patrick keeps his head and balances all the stimuli, but Patrick centering himself must do something unholy for Toews, because he loses his goddamn mind, in the best way.

The first shootout goal Toews scores is crisp and pretty as anything, to say nothing of his face as he rushes the ecstatic Team Canada bench in celebration. He looks like a different person without the high strung tension and omnipresent worry lines. Patrick can’t take his eyes away. 

Patrick squares up for his own turn, still on a high of zen clarity. Rushing the net is like breathing. He needles the puck between Price’s legs just quick enough that Price can’t clap it with his calves, a feat of timing more than placement. Patrick has barely celebrated before Toews is back on the ice and beating Frazee with a miraculous shot, post to post then in. This time on his way back to the bench, Toews’ bemused attention is on Patrick instead of his team or the crowd. He isn’t even smiling, but his teammates swallow Toews up in eager embraces all the same. 

_Can_ Patrick shut it off? Whatever he’s tapped into, it feels like a runaway bus. His teammates are fighting tooth and nail to keep themselves in this shootout, to get Team USA through to the gold medal game. He watches the shootout continue, telling himself he would shut this… _thing_ off if he knew how. But the truth is, the guilt is only skin-deep. Lower, there’s only a peculiar satisfaction Patrick can feel all the way down in his bones. Down that deep, there isn’t even a game going on. Only a sweet chord played on his veins, like they were stretched tight when a ghostly hand reached in to pluck them, and now it’s reverberating through him and humming and humming and humming. He can hear it and feel it and fuck, Patrick has officially lost it.

He glances up to the scoreboard. Canada could win it with the next goal. They send in Toews, his third turn in the shootout. Patrick can’t blame the coaching staff for pressing their advantage (and a 6’2” Manitoban who has spontaneously mastered the laws of hockey and physics is an advantage if Patrick has ever seen one). 

This time, Toews roofs it. It is a deadly shot, sailing right into that sweet spot tucked up behind the bar. The game is over, the bench is in shock, and Patrick might actually have a bit of a boner. This situation has completely gotten away from him.

Toews’ teammates pile on top of him while Patrick tries to stop the way his head is spinning. Patrick is trying hard to muster up some remorse—at least if he felt guilty he’d still know which side he was on. But it’s difficult to manage in the face of that strong and clinically insane knee jerk arousal.

The more time that goes by, the more the facts of what just happened catch up with Patrick. One by one, the strings of the balloons holding him off the ground are cut and he falls farther and farther away from whatever delusion he was floating with before. String by string, he loses connection until he is alone in his head once more. Patrick’s benchmates dutifully begin to shuffle back onto the ice for the handshake line. Team Canada is still celebrating. Toews is near suffocating under all the bodies and attention. Patrick can’t even see him. 

By the time Patrick is back on the ice, helmet in his hands, he’s achieved the proper blend of anger/frustration/disappointment about losing in the semi finals like this. He got to see Toews eat his words about the risks of joining the tournament, but that victory is small and hollow. Toews can maintain that Patrick is a busybody, sure, but he can’t deny that Patrick was _right._ And no one can argue that Patrick was rooting against the guy. Y’know, since Patrick actively if accidentally shot his own team in the knee by helping him.

When their celebration is nearing an unsportsmanlike length, the Canadians start to shuffle into place. Toews is catching his breath, unaware Patrick is watching him. He still isn’t smiling, a single static point in a sea of enthusiasm. Against the backdrop of his frenzied teammates, Toews looks like he’s trying to do calculus in the middle of a frat party. 

Patrick tries not to pay special attention to Toews when he reaches him in the handshake line, but Toews is staring him down. He’s flushed. He was so occupied with his team’s celebration and congratulations that he hasn’t even taken his gloves off. The handshake is stiff and brisk. Toews looks like he’s bracing himself for Patrick to say _I told you so_ and Patrick is bracing himself for Toews to do something stupid like _thank_ him. They both wait a beat, but neither happens.

“Good game,” they both mumble, equally stilted, and move on down the line. Well, at least they’re both uncomfortable.

It takes three _good-game_ s for Patrick to realize he’s making a distracted, constipated face thinking about it because Letang is looking at Patrick like he’s disturbed. Patrick straightens his face and tries to put it all out of his mind. Still, he can’t help hanging back from the black procession of teammates retreating to the locker room. He sees Toews’ mom find him. Sees them embrace.

Above the tunnel, a reporter is filming his segment on the game. Patrick only catches a few words. “Insane,” “Toews,” “heroic.” While Patrick definitely never wants anyone to know his part in what happened here, he also feels like they accomplished something today, he and Toews. Right up there with his rational desire for no one to ever know how he fucked his own team over, part of Patrick wants some of the credit. Not all of the credit—Toews was already having, admittedly, a phenomenal tournament before all the weirdness went down, and if that ear plug hadn’t fallen out he would have continued to have a dominant game against Team USA without Patrick doing anything (not to mention the fact that in a really odd way, it felt like guiding Toews elevated Patrick’s game). But Toews’ ear plug _did_ fall out, Patrick _did_ do something about it, and now he has nothing to show for it but a conscience that’s intact, a self-view that isn’t, and a bronze medal game versus Sweden.

He doesn’t end up having much time to stew in his mixed-up feelings and guilt afterwards. Dealing with freaky guide shit during this international tournament clearly wasn’t enough to contend with, because life decides to shit on Patrick’s comforts, too. You know, while life is on a roll.

When Patrick is forced to realize Carter MacLean kind of sucks, it’s not because of some dramatic confrontation. It’s more like a long overdue admission. Patrick is minding his own business, doing his stretches to get loose for the bronze medal game. His headphones went missing days ago, so he can’t tune out the distracting conversations bouncing all around him. 

“Just saying what we’re all thinking, but this bronze game is pretty much a formality. It’s a lock.” Carter’s flippancy is part of his charm, but god does it make him sound like a douche.

“We played the Swedes last week and it went to OT,” JVR points out.

Carter just waves a hand. “They’ve run out of steam, though. Everybody can tell.”

“Dunno, Olsson still looks pretty gritty from where I’m sitting. I’m still bruised from last time.” JVR’s hand goes to his ribs.

“Pfff, Olsson’s a fag.” Carter looks up from fastening his shoulder pads to impress his point on JVR. “Not just talking shit. No, on the actual, man.”

JVR rolls his eyes and doesn’t appear to pay Carter any mind, but that just encourages him more. “No, yeah,” Carter continues in response to nothing, “like an actual faggot. I’m not being a dick, that’s like. A fact. All I’m saying is, I’m not worried about that dude’s ‘grit’ unless I’m sharing a shower with him.”

If there’s more to the discussion, Patrick doesn’t hear it. He decides to brave the hallway for his calf stretches. Truthfully, he’s more blindsided by his own annoyance than anything else. It’s a conversation he’s heard dozens of times, really. There’s no one reason that this particular instance leaves such a sour taste in Patrick mouth (aside from the fact that the words come from a dude who has literally tried to goad Patrick into more than one dick measuring contest, ‘just to see’). With everything else going on, Patrick just doesn’t have any patience for this kind of shit right now. So it finally crystallizes in his mind that while Carter has always been a lovable douche, he’s _definitely_ more one than the other. 

The prospect of training with him in Florida suddenly seems insufferable. Patrick doesn’t want to deal with him for months between the OHL season and the draft. In fact, Patrick abruptly doesn’t want to deal with this at all. But that’s something to worry about after the tournament.

They win bronze. After the medal ceremony, Patrick stays in the arena to watch the gold medal match between Canada and Russia by himself. He’s conflicted about going, but some nagging voice that may or not be his conscience bullies him into it. He can’t change what happened on the ice against Canada, so his main objective now is to be able to move on from it as cleanly as possible. Patrick suspects that moving on will be difficult if Toews gets injured while Patrick blows off this final game. He doesn’t need _more_ guilt on his plate. His plate is full. In fact, there’s no way he’s going to finish it all, please take some. No, really, he insists.

Patrick has never felt particularly sensitive to sentinel energy but, as far as he can tell, that shit-going-haywire sensation he felt during the Canada-USA game doesn’t crop up again. Toews is so fucking good when the sentinel shit isn’t a factor. It seems wrong that consistency is out of his reach and the cause is out of his hands. In the end, Patrick’s presence has no effect whatsoever on the gold medal game, and having to watch Team Canada celebrate stings bitterly. But it’s worth it to be able to leave feeling morally alright about not leaving Toews defenseless against the vicissitudes of his own batshit nervous system. Conscience clear.

He doesn’t want to deal with Carter back in their hotel room afterwards, but he’s not supposed to leave the hotel, either. He considers texting Gags, but as he’s about to press send he remembers that Gags is probably out celebrating with the rest of Team Canada. So Patrick roams the halls aimlessly until Skille pulls him into his room and plies him with Svedka. 

It’s late when Patrick ambles back to his own room. The lights are off inside. While he’s focusing on not making too much noise, he nearly falls on his ass slipping on a piece of paper just inside the doorway. He rights himself and picks up the note, scrawled on the hotel’s notepad paper.

_Came by but you were out. Wanted to say thanks for coming to the game.  
J Toews_

There’s a phone number scrawled at the bottom of it. Kinda creepy that Toews could just spot him in the crowd like that when Patrick thought he was pretty stealthy, but that’s sentinel eyesight for you. Patrick looks over his shoulder into the hallway with shifty eyes even though it’s probably been hours since Toews dropped by. Kinda creepy he knew Patrick’s room number, too. Patrick’s only got five hours until he has to be on a bus to the airport, so he stuffs the note into his toiletry bag and sets about scrubbing the taste of vodka from his mouth.

*

It’s a relief to settle back down in London. He saves Toews’ number, but he doesn’t use it. Patrick’s too busy restructuring his entire spring. If he isn’t training in Florida with Carter, he’s got to stay somewhere else. His mom doesn’t ask too many questions when he tells her about his change of heart, maybe picking up on Patrick’s discomfort or maybe just grateful to have him home a bit longer before he leaves the nest for good. The basement is not the most appealing living situation, but if the Knights do well in the playoffs, Patrick won’t have to stay in Buffalo long.

After getting the all-clear from his mom, he texts Carter with a lightly bullshit-flavored story about his dad wanting Patrick to train with his people in Buffalo and sorry for the change of plans and maybe we can still hang out before the combine bro. Carter seems disappointed and confused about it, but that’s one thing Patrick can’t manage to feel guilty about.

Placing bronze, on the other hand, he can feel plenty guilty about. And angry. It’s over and done with, but it still rankles, losing like that. Sometimes a petulant gremlin in Patrick’s brain insists Patrick _did_ win it, he just won it for the wrong team. He deserves to have his American citizenship revoked, but he also deserves one of those gold medals, dammit. In moments of weakness, he rage googles Toews and he reads the effusive articles about the shootout and he grinds his teeth and he daydreams about snatching that medal right off Toews’ long, proud neck—or maybe he’d let Toews keep it and Patrick would tug Toews’ neck back by the ribbon so that he couldn’t hide his face in the pillows while Patrick—

Patrick spends a lot of time in cold showers or in the Wilsons’ cold garage with his stick, stubbornly drumming the garbage out of his brain. 

In moments of less weakness and more self control, he 100% knows that the situation wasn’t Toews’ fault, other than his piss poor decision to compete in the tournament in the first place. It’s not really Toews that Patrick is angry at, but he’s still angry. It’s stupid because, medals notwithstanding, Patrick had a great tournament. In a competition of mostly made up of twenty-year-olds, he was one tally away from being tied for the tournament lead in points. (Two points ahead of Toews. Not that Patrick was counting.) He’s doing his best to ride the momentum into the spring as more and more scouts perch in the stands of his games. The WJC was the springboard he hoped it would be. 

To Patrick’s surprise, the same doesn’t seem to be true for Toews. That shootout got a lot of media attention and he was named to the WJC All-Star Team along with Patrick, but the Sabres still don’t clear him for play. When three weeks pass with Toews sidelined, Patrick thinks about texting him something along the lines of ‘sucks.’ But it’s already been an awkwardly long time since he got Toews’ number and he knows the dude is really touchy about that particular topic, so Patrick doesn’t say anything. 

Toews doesn’t touch NHL ice until February.

“What was the holdup?” Patrick blurts, then winces, thankful that his dad can’t see him over the phone. It’s the one question he’s successfully kept himself from asking for a whole month now. On his list of things to worry about, Toews should be somewhere above people’s opinions of Patrick’s dance moves and below the gaucho pant trend. Which is to say: very low.

“What’s that?”

“The team’s holdup,” Patrick prods.

“Team didn’t have a holdup. We were ready to clear Jon the day after he came in from Sweden.”

Patrick frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“He passed his mental evals, but after we got the results, he admitted to having episodes as recently as New Years.” Patrick’s dad sighs. “Gotta say, I think it was hard for him to do. He’s been rattling around the house all month like a fly in a jar. We’re all pretty relieved that he’s back in the lineup.”

“He _turned himself in?”_ Patrick peeks out the window, but the sky isn’t falling.

“That’s one way to put it,” his dad snorts. His dad’s car dings in the background until he gets out and shuts the door. “I gotta go, Buzz. Just got home. If you’re that curious about it, I’ll hand the phone over to Tazer. He’s right here.”

“What? No!” Patrick’s voice absolutely does not break. 

“Talk to you later, son.” His dad is laughing at him. Patrick’s family sucks. Toews can have them. 

The line goes dead, mercifully, and Patrick goes back out to the garage to stickhandle. He finds that he’s still peeved by the idea of Toews being a fixture in Patrick’s house. Sitting in Patrick’s kitchen. Using Patrick’s mug. Taking Patrick’s spot on the couch. Sleeping in Patrick’s bed. Sweating all over Patrick’s stationary bike. Doing pull-ups on Patrick’s pull-up bar in the doorway of Patrick’s bathroom. Doing pull-ups _shirtless_ on Patrick’s pull-up bar—

“Need me to get you a helmet?” Mrs. Wilson asks delicately from the doorway to the kitchen. 

Patrick doesn’t look up from banging his head against the garage wall. 

“No,” he groans.


	3. Chapter 3

_‘Well, that was a disaster,’_ is the most Patrick can do to editorialize on the Knights’ first round exit from the playoffs. 

Loose items rattle around the jeep as Patrick makes his way south, sticks and CD cases and hat trick sombreros. He thought he’d have more time in London. Sure, he might be back there next year if he doesn’t make the team that drafts him, but it won’t be with this team, this roster, with Gags and Tits and the rest. They should have gone all the way. They should have sliced through the league like a hot knife through butter, but Patrick hasn’t been playing like himself. He stumbled into the playoffs distracted and never quite found his footing. Five measly games later, and he’d lost the chance. Knocked out.

Now Patrick is supposed to hunker down to get in peak shape for the combine before he’s even extracted a lesson from their whopping loss, four games to one. Being in Buffalo will have its perks, but there’s no one training with him, other than the actual trainers and maybe occasionally his dad. It sounds so lonely compared to Robbie Drummond’s garage or Gags’ home gym.

And he had _better_ train because Patrick’s coaches weren’t the only ones to notice his backsliding in the playoffs. Scouts don’t ignore things like that. Patrick shouldn’t have been so pleased with his WJC performance. He shouldn’t have paid attention to the ISS rankings. He shouldn’t have gotten so ahead of himself. Hope is a fire: sometimes useful, always dangerous. 

Patrick had been anxious about coming home, about how to act or what to say to Toews, who seemed to have a knack for making Patrick act like a total weirdo. In retrospect, Patrick might have saved himself the trouble of worrying, as he barely sees Toews at all, and never alone. Patrick’s first morning home, Toews’ dark head is a subdued presence at the breakfast table, steaming his face over a mug of green tea. It’s only a slim silver lining to Patrick that the golden boy is so clearly not a morning person.

Toews glances up, caught somewhat off kilter, when Patrick approaches the table with a bowl of Cheerios and plops down next to Erica. Toews’ lips unstick like he’s going to say something—it’s the first time they’ve seen each other face to face since the handshake line in Sweden—but what can either of them say while Patrick’s sisters are filling up the airspace with high school gossip?

After giving a brief nod to Toews, Patrick only has a moment to sit uncomfortably, heart racing for no reason while he feigns interest in his cereal. Then his dad is plodding through the room headed for the garage while gesturing to Toews.

“If you still wanna carpool, the train is leaving the station. Have a good day, girls, Buzz.” And then his dad is out of sight, already out the door.

Toews stands and Patrick belatedly notices that he’s already dressed for the day, his buffaslug logo tee stretched taut across his chest. “Coming!” Toews calls after Patrick’s dad as he somehow hoists his duffel and his thermos with the same hand. He glances over his shoulder once before he disappears down the hallway, snapping his face back forward when he finds Patrick staring after him in return. 

“Carpool?” Patrick prods, after the garage door has swung shut.

“The environment,” two of the girls quote in baritone unison, making faces. Erica snorts, but only eyes Patrick quietly.

That’s the most they see of each other for days, though Patrick occasionally hears Toews using up the hot water or moving around upstairs in Patrick’s bedroom, directly above Patrick’s new basement residence. Patrick is busy; it’s not like his job is part-time. Strength training most mornings, drills and cardio every afternoon—one of the silver linings of shitting the bed during the OHL playoffs is that Patrick has more time to jack up his training program to try and earn some bulk back before the combine in May. Home gym by himself, legit gym with his trainer, basketball court with hometown friends as often as he can. Patrick is desperate for some competitive cardio while he pines for the rink. He’s supposed to stay off the ice for the most part to give some of those muscle groups a break. (Despite Patrick assuring him otherwise, his dad suspects that Patrick is nursing a lingering injury, which, while being a tidy explanation for his postseason performance, is not true.) Patrick still reserves a little ice time once in a while to keep himself sane, promising that it’s just to practice his shot.

And for Toews, it’s towards the end of the NHL’s regular season and everything is ramping up. It’s all ships in the night. Tuesday, Patrick sees Toews in the living room watching a Western Conference game with his dad. Wednesday, they pass each other in the garage. Thursday, Patrick thinks he hears Toews behind him while he’s washing the dishes but he doesn’t look. Friday, Patrick realizes he’s marking the days by whether he sees Toews and dedicates his afternoon to a grueling run that’s successful in getting him out of the house for a long time but unsuccessful in actually distracting him.

The thing is, Patrick never knows when he’s going to run into Toews. Walking around the house feels like playing Minesweeper, because the few times they do cross paths, the minute Patrick’s eyes catch on Toews’ dark head, his heart starts to rabbit for no damn reason. And every time, Patrick inevitably makes it worse, mortified by the thought that Toews can probably _hear_ that and oh god, what is wrong with Patrick?

Patrick is not a guy who is easily flustered. It doesn’t come naturally to him and he finds that he does not care for it one bit. For years, he’s been the guy who stubbornly refused to be intimidated. He wouldn’t have it. Not by his opponents, not by his teammates, not by lofty professional guides, not by dismissive agents, not by hot older girls at parties, and not by his failures. Not by anything but his own ambition. And yet there’s something so big in any room Toews is in, some elephant that Patrick can’t see the full shape of. Patrick doesn’t know what the invisible elephant is precisely, beyond awkward secrecy and past friction, but he knows there isn’t space for all three of them in one room, so he never stays for long. Their eyes will meet in the kitchen, and Toews is just helping chop broccoli but Patrick feels his cool evaporating and he doesn’t know what to do with that other than retreat as soon as possible.

He lays a palm to his chest, breathing with his back against the chilly wall of the basement, feeling dazed and concerned about his lung capacity. 

“Is the VO₂ max really your main concern, Buzz?” his dad asks from the top of the stairs, minutes later.

“Just…” huff, “... just making sure,” Patrick pants from the stationary bike.

That’s the extent of their interactions for a modest handful of days. All quiet. Like they’re both carefully adhering to the letter of some unspoken treaty. The impasse grows long enough that it makes Patrick more paranoid than their run-ins.

Patrick is in the basement engaged in some well-earned Me Time, feeling totally relaxed for the first time in days. He’s right in the home stretch, maybe ten strokes away, when he hears a small creak from the floorboards overhead and realizes all at once that Jesus Christ, forget his hand on his dick, Toews can probably hear the dudes moaning through Patrick’s _earbuds._ Oh god.

What directly followed that epiphany is irrelevant, no one’s business but Patrick’s, and ultimately without bearing on the overall havoc this sudden paranoia wreaks on Patrick’s day to day life. 

After a casual inquiry, Patrick’s mom assures him that Jonny wears his noise-cancellers whenever he can. But the very next night, Patrick is slowly but surely working his way through a rented copy of _When a Stranger Calls_ because Camilla Belle is hot and Gags bet him twenty bucks he wouldn’t. The movie is not great but it still gets Patrick’s hackles up. 

Camilla Belle is absolutely silent, bracing herself up against a window. The moment builds for an almost certain jumpscare. Any second now… Any second… Patrick’s ringtone blares. His box of Reese’s Pieces goes flying, candy everywhere. But there’s something else. Something almost, almost hidden under the sound of Patrick’s phone and the rain of chocolate: the quiet sound of something moving above Patrick’s head. Oh god. Oh god. The call is coming from inside the house.

Patrick looks up in slow-mo to the empty rafters of the unfinished basement ceiling. He can’t hear shit because his Blackberry is still shrieking. Caller ID says it’s Carter, so Patrick just waits it out, frozen in place like a bronze monument to the fragility of the human psyche.

Silence reigns, ringing in Patrick’s ears louder than the phone. 

“Toews?” Patrick whispers reluctantly. He waits five beats, holding his breath. 

No response. The tense quiet drags out until the low hum of the basement fridge starts to sound like the score to an indie slasher.

“Knock twice on the floor if you can hear me,” Patrick demands, voice still low. It’s suddenly paramount that Patrick know exactly how much privacy he is afforded down here… and whether or not there’s a murderer in the house. 

Nothing.

As a last ditch effort, Patrick clutches his throat and wheezes out, “Oh no! I’m,” _glk_ , “choking on a Dorito!”

No movement upstairs.

“Can’t… breathe… Vision… dimming… Life… flashing before eyes. Birthdays… Christmases… That time I banged Mrs. Toews,” Patrick baits the unflappable silence.

When ten minutes pass without Toews or a squadron of paramedics busting down the door, Patrick breathes easy again. Patrick will allow that there is a slim chance Toews did hear him and, in his fit of rage over Patrick’s amazing and clever your-mom joke, decided to leave Patrick for dead. But Toews doesn’t look surprised to see Patrick alive and well the next morning, so Patrick counts it as a win. The Batcave is secure for now.

Not to brag or anything, but Patrick’s seen his fair share of _Law & Order_ and he knows there are plenty of ways to prove that someone knows more than they’re letting on. Patrick keeps trying to set tripwires and catch Toews out, but none of them get a discernable reaction. “Gosh, what am I gonna do with all these gross kelp shakes my trainer gave me? Guess I’ll toss’em out.” No response. “And recycling is for pussies.” Patrick even knocks his Gatorade bottle against the trash can for the full auditory experience but his performance goes unappreciated. “Hope someone warned Toews to lock his windows after all these robberies in the neighborhood.” “Oh my god, GNC is having a storewide sale!” Anything that might elicit a response. 

And if Patrick’s last ditch effort doesn’t elicit a response, nothing will. His ultimate weapon? The tennis ball. _Bup, bup, bup, bup._ Against the wall, against the fridge door, against the floor, banked from corner to corner and back to Patrick again. Truthfully, it doesn’t actually start as a water torture strategy. Uncurbed, Patrick’s natural state is essentially a perpetual motion machine. So it’s merely a matter of not curbing it. He’s constantly chewing, clicking, bouncing, or humming something. Death by a thousand clicks. After a week of this, Toews still has all his hair and Patrick still has all his limbs, so it’s clear that Toews doesn’t hear any of it.

Patrick still occasionally peppers in some bait more for fun than for profit. Sometimes they’re lazy lies, sometimes they’re lazy truths. Sometimes Toews isn’t even in the house. It just becomes habit, devolving into, “And that’s when the aliens took me…” or, “Breaking it off with her felt natural, though, considering we were both lusting after the same dude—Lemme tell you, between me and this other dude, this girl’s got some _taste._ ”

There’s something comforting about flopping back onto the pullout bed after a grueling workout and huffing to the ceiling about how his goal weight keeps hovering out of reach. About how at this rate Patrick will have dropped to 152 pounds by the combine and thusly go 152nd overall. About the stress dream he had where he was drafted by the Ducks but when he reported for prospect camp he found out it was the peewee Mighty Ducks and not the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. Emilio Estevez was _so mean_ to him.

*

“Woah woah woah, where’s the milk?” It’s not even 8 AM and Patrick’s day is already ruined. He’s been dreaming about Lucky Charms for a week (in the intermissions between stress dreams) and he finally got to the grocery store to buy some yesterday.

“I needed it for the rolls.” Toews is parked in front of the oven, opening it briefly to check them. “Sorry. But these are almost ready. If you want one instead.”

The smell of cinnamon rolls fills the air. They reek of brown-nosery. And maple pecan. Patrick grumbles. “Did you have to use all of it?”

“It was two days past its sell-by. Seemed like the thing to do.”

The Sabres had team bonding last night. From what Patrick has seen of ‘team bonding,’ Toews shouldn’t be conscious until noon, and he shouldn’t be making coherent arguments until _Wednesday._

“Shouldn’t you be more hungover?” Patrick squints, annoyed. Toews can’t do _anything_ right.

“I don’t drink.”

“Of course you don’t,” Patrick enunciates, flat and droll. Silence. He doesn’t have to look over to know that Toews is scowling. Patrick hopes his voice is coming out even, despite the fact that his pulse has yet again gone rogue. Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.

The thing about Toews, Patrick is learning, is that his confused face just looks real angry. “Your sisters said everyone would like maple pecan cinnamon buns,” Toews grudgingly shares.

“I’m allergic to pecans, but yeah, other than that,” he snipes. It’s a really minor allergy, more of an irritant, but Toews doesn’t need to know that. It’s too early in the morning for Patrick to be an adult about his breakfast plans being sabotaged.

“Hush, Patty, don’t ruin this for the rest of us,” hisses Jessica as she tromps downstairs, backpack slung over one shoulder. “Jonny’s cinnamon buns are the best and he neeeeever makes them.” She hipchecks Patrick out of the way to get at the OJ. “Can I get extra icing on mine?” she asks, batting her lashes.

“Are you even going to try and pretend you didn’t con me into making these?” Toews says in lieu of an answer.

Jessica sips her OJ in marked silence.

Toews shakes his head and sets himself to the task of carefully piping icing across the pan of buns, laser focus in his eyes. The veins in his forearms stand out as he applies measured, even pressure for the perfect effect. It should be a wholly ridiculous sight, and it sort of is, but it’s also wholly beguiling and Patrick gets so distracted watching Toews that he accidentally sweetens his coffee with salt.

Patrick is incredulous that Toews would eat such a sugared monstrosity as a cinnamon bun, and sure enough, when Toews comes to sit next to Jessica at the breakfast table, he’s holding nothing but a bowlful of unseasoned oatmeal and banana slices. 

“Why even make them, then?” Patrick asks, taking a stubborn sip of his salty coffee because making a fresh cup would acknowledge that Toews has in some way flustered him.

Toews just shrugs and simply says, “They have midterms.” And then before Patrick can even properly work himself into a lather over Toews being a better brother to Patrick’s sisters than Patrick is, Toews asks, “Why is there salt in your coffee?”

There’s a moment of eye contact. Steady, he tells himself. Patrick is not flustered. Patrick is not unsettled. Patrick has a totally reasonable explanation… any minute now. Ba-bump, ba-bump.

“Because fuck you, that’s why.” Patrick scrapes his chair back and takes his salty coffee—which is _his_ business, by the way—to the basement with him. He hates Toews. So, so much. 

Everything Toews does starts to make him angry. Patrick’s teenage hormones are out of whack and he knows that, but knowing doesn’t make the anger any less real. It’s Toews’ fault Patrick keeps stumbling over the new recycling bins in the garage. It’s Toews’ fault that the workout half of the basement keeps getting rearranged from the way Patrick likes it. It’s Toews’ fault that Patrick can’t sleep. The pullout mattress is lumpy, the basement is dark, and after a week, Patrick starts to feel like he’s the crazy son his ashamed family has to keep chained up down there. 

The entire house feels different whenever Toews is gone, and not in a figurative way. That’s how Patrick knows Toews has already left for his home game against Calgary. There’s this sudden absence of potential energy Patrick can feel constantly humming in the background. On the one hand, the buzzing of it drives Patrick to distraction. On the other, it makes Patrick run and cycle way more than he would otherwise, just trying to exhaust himself, so he might have Toews to thank for the current state of his endurance.

Patrick has been studiously fighting the urge to snoop on his own room ever since he moved home, mostly because he was avoiding Toews. But he wants to see if Toews locked his windows to thwart Patrick’s made-up robbers or left any other incriminating clues behind. Patrick eases the bedroom door open feeling like a cat burglar.

It’s dark and he doesn’t want to touch anything in case Toews will somehow know he’s been here. If he’s careful, Patrick is confident he can evade detection since the whole room probably smells like Patrick all the time anyways. So he waits for his eyes to adjust instead of hitting the light switch and then glances around. 

You’d think Patrick wouldn’t be so attached to this room, seeing as he barely spent any waking hours here, even as a child. But that’s probably the exact reason he does get sentimental about it—the fixed port in the hectic storm that is his nomadic lifestyle.

The bedroom isn’t as different as he imagined. One of the window sills has a few plants on it and the bedspread is obviously different, but those are the only two changes to quickly jump out at him. A picture of Patrick with Joe Sakic still has its place of honor on the wall alongside some framed hockey cards and newspaper clippings. He’s embarrassed to note that his mom left a plastic trophy awarding Patrick ‘Best Smile’ in his second grade class on a top shelf where Toews could see it. (And okay, maybe the embarrassing part is that Patrick kept the award, but of course Patrick kept it, he had to fight Cam Romano tooth and nail for that one.) He’ll have to do sweep for other mortifying details; Patrick always glosses over these things when he mentally practices his future episode of _MTV Cribs_. The room is predictably messier than Patrick keeps it. Free of dust and dirt, but disorderly in a way Patrick knew to expect that after sharing bathroom and gym with Toews. 

“Gross,” he mutters at a pile of dirty socks that has the decency to look a little ashamed of itself.

Shoes are kicked all over the place and the bed is rumpled. There’s a little notepad on the bed with a pen jammed inside. Oh man, if Toews keeps a diary, Patrick will never stop laughing. He moves to get a closer look, but he’s interrupted by a voice from behind him.

“Pat, what are you doing in there?” Erica asks from the hall.

“Just wanted to look around was all.” Patrick turns towards her, doing his best not to look sheepish. It’s his room, dammit.

Erica’s nose scrunches up in confusion. “I thought Jonny was in there meditating.”

“I am,” a voice says evenly behind Patrick.

“Jesus Christ!” Patrick jumps possibly three feet in the air and spins, clutching at his heart. “What the hell, dude?”

He still can’t see the guy, so Patrick flicks the lights on. Toews doesn’t move, but Patrick can just barely see the top of his head on the far side of the bed. Patrick circles the bed to find Toews cross-legged on the floor. Meditating. Shirtless, but that goes without saying. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Patrick’s heart rate has yet to recover. He’s such a shitty guide; he’s certain other guides like Mr. Wilson would never be caught unawares by a sentinel this way. Erica’s still laughing in the doorway.

Toews doesn’t turn to look at him. From this angle, Patrick can’t tell if his eyes are even open. In the end, Toews just graces him with a zen shrug. 

Patrick considers himself basically shameless, for better or for worse. How does he always manage to do this stupid shit in front of Toews? And more importantly, why does that bother Patrick so much? Toews doesn’t ask, but Patrick’s eyes still scan the room, trying to find some reasonable explanation for his snooping. In the light, he notices something that he couldn’t see before.

He leans down for a closer look. “Are those my sheets?”

“No,” Toews says, too quick for someone whose consciousness is supposedly emptied, or whatever meditation is supposed to do. “I don’t know.”

Patrick eyes the back of Toews’ head. He notes that the background humming and restlessness are buzzing back to life. Guide senses are weird. Toews is weird. This is all too weird to deal with. 

Toews tilts his head back and eyes Patrick over the bedspread, more accusatory than zen. “Is that what you came in here for?”

“No. I just,” Patrick casts his eyes around the room again. “I just needed to grab a stick.” He grabs one at random from the stick rack nailed to the ceiling above the bed. It’s a lame excuse, especially since they’re all old souvenir sticks and Toews has to know that. Erica certainly knows that, judging by the way she snorts from the hallway behind him.

“Uh huh,” Toews says, as unimpressed as he is underdressed. 

“Whatever.” Patrick makes his exit. Erica’s got a condescending ‘better luck next time’ expression for him when he passes by, but Patrick just clenches his hockey stick menacingly and keeps walking. At least this time he didn’t straight up retreat like at breakfast the other day.

“Don’t worry,” Erica tells him. “I’m sure next time he won’t be there and you can sniff his underwear in peace.”

Patrick is so shocked and disgusted that he can only sputter as Erica snickers her way upstairs. Patrick has clearly failed her as a mentor. She’s a lost cause. He’ll have to be more careful with his remaining disciples. Erica’s been giving him an uncomfortable amount of shit concerning Toews ever since Patrick moved back home. Uncomfortable because, c’mon. Also uncomfortable because Toews can fucking _hear you,_ Erica.

The only reprieve is when she’s out with her new boyfriend. That had been an interesting conversation. Erica called Patrick up back in January, and it went something like:

“Just so you have a heads up,” she said, “because you’ve been so touchy on the subject, I thought I should let you know I’ve been going out with someone. He’s really decent, you don’t need to worry about anything. But since you’ve been such a freak about this I’m giving you some notice. It’s just a guy named Sam I go to school with.”

“Which Sam? Basketball Sam?”

“Ugh, of course you know him. So? You gonna be weird about this?”

“... Nah.”

“Really?”

“Should I be?”

“No, I mean, this is good, but…”

“You’re a smart girl, you can handle yourself. And if you can’t, you know where to find me. Crack some skulls.” (Sam is taller, but Patrick could totally take him.)

“Thanks? This isn’t how I thought this would go.” 

“Fuck you, I’m reasonable.”

A pause, and then, “Also, Jonny asked me out.”

_“What.”_

“Kidding,” Erica sang, and promptly hung up.

So in summary, Patrick was an awesome and chill big bro and Erica thanked him by deciding to be a raging weirdo to him whenever she has the opportunity. The embarrassment is just more fuel for his resentment towards Jonny, which has not improved at all.

Patrick figures they’re at least evenly matched in their mutual disdain, since Toews is obviously not going to be a fan of the guy who told him he wasn’t prepared for the WJC, the guy who says nothing to Toews besides criticizing him. It’s more or less like being road roommates that hate each other. Which, let’s face it, they’ve both definitely experienced before by this point in their hockey careers.

“Oh my god, you have an entire bedroom to toss Gatorade bottles in! It’s bad enough sleeping in the cellar-slash-gym without you turning it into a garbage dump!”

Toews rolls his eyes. “You barely even gave me a chance to pick them up.”

“And the ones in the bathroom?” 

Toews huffs. “Yes, Mom, I’ll clean my room. That mess isn’t all me, you know. I’m only here half the time.”

“Sure, pass the buck.” None of these are his. Like he’d ever drink Glacier Freeze, blech. As a man of culture, Patrick is Lemon Lime only. Patrick picks up empty bottles from his side of the basement as he finds them and tosses them at Toews’ head. Toews catches them easily and begins hunting down the ones closer to him.

Patrick finds an unwashed gym sock and holds it up without saying a word.

“You’ve made your point. You don’t have to hassle me about it.” Toews eyes his ridiculous pile of bottles trying to figure out how to carry them all. His elegant solution is to strip off his shirt and use it as a bag. Living with Toews is a trial. (It turns out he does use the pull-up bar in Patrick’s bathroom doorway, without compunction. Or a shirt.) The warm flicker in Patrick’s belly only makes him more contrary. 

“Uh, yeah, I _do._ I can’t even keep my shaving stuff upstairs—”

Toews snickers meanly. “You shave? That’s cute.”

Patrick talks over him, undeterred, “—because the bathroom counter is covered with your supplements! It’s a goddamn GNC in there!” 

Meanwhile, Toews doesn’t appear to be paying him much mind. He and his uselessly pretty back are just idly collecting stray pucks. The way his shoulder blades move as he bends to reach for a tennis ball is entrancing. Goddammit. 

“Look, Toews, I don’t know what they taught you in Canada—”

Toews turns around to squint in disbelief. “Did you just call me _‘Toews?’”_

“—but here in America, it’s considered rude to make someone trip on a pill bottle and die on their own bathroom floor—”

“Yeah, no, but getting back to how weird it is that you called me ‘Toews’—”

“—not to mention putting kelp in scrambled eggs. I’m pretty sure that’s a federal offense.” Patrick wrinkles his nose at the growing pile of laundry and miscellany at his feet. “If I find one more of your rank towels, I’m getting your visa revoked.”

Toews groans at the ceiling. “Jesus. What is it gonna take for you to quit bitching about this? Can I bribe you? What do you want?”

Patrick snorts and quips, “My house back,” under his breath. _Bribery._ Like it’s so impossible to just pick your own shit up. 

But, true to form, Toews hears him and appears to consider it as a serious suggestion. “Look, okay, how about this: I’ll give you your room back when I’m on road trips, if you quit being a primadonna the rest of the time.” Toews silently reviews his own proposal before swiftly adding, “And if you don’t call me ‘Toews’ again.”

What Toews is proposing is not an insignificant chunk of time, and Patrick is almost embarrassed by how much he covets his old room, his old bed. Maybe Toews picked up on that; it’s a pretty strange compromise to come up with out of the blue. So while Patrick resents the implication that refusing to sleep on a pile of sweaty gym socks is diva behavior, he is unable to deny that it’s a tempting offer.

“Deal.”

For a Tier Three sentinel who has to be very careful about his living arrangements, Toews—Jonny—is remarkably sanguine about ceding the bedroom to Patrick. To his credit, he doesn’t try to weasel his way out of the bargain. He even straightens the room up before leaving on his road trip. 

Patrick can’t explain why, when he thanks Jonny for all of this, the guy shuffles his feet and fails to meet Patrick’s eyes, but Patrick isn’t going to look this gift horse in the mouth. 

Patrick looks forward to that first road trip. At night, his bedroom is quiet and dark enough that Patrick can’t see all the changes that have been made to it. He keeps the lights off and tucks himself in trying to revisit the simpler times in his life before the stress of his massive NHL dreams sat so close and heavy on his shoulders, before he learned the shape of his family by living so long outside of it, before his mind hosted so many strange thoughts and dilemmas.

Patrick doesn’t sleep any better in his childhood bed. In retrospect, he isn’t sure why he expected any different. The truth is, he barely spent any waking hours in this bedroom, even as a child. Even before he moved out in middle school. So it’s not like he’s been missing a familiar comfort; maybe he just resented losing it when he had so few remaining ties to his idea of a normal childhood. He can’t help tasting the bitterness every now and then.

It’s unfair, he knows, because he made the decision to leave home, too. It’s unfair because they all agreed and Patrick wouldn’t go back and change it. Still, it was whole years of his childhood and his parents’ willingness to leverage that… it’s not something that’s easy to forget. Patrick’s parents had to pick between Patrick and Patrick’s ambitions. It’s a childish sentiment when he would’ve done it all again, but Patrick would’ve liked to be picked first.

He’s been holding onto that for a long time.

So yeah, he was hoping his childhood bed would work like some kind of magic spell putting everything back to normal. Instead, Patrick is inching closer and closer to accepting that things aren’t going back and that there may have never been a normal to begin with. He keeps sleeping upstairs when he can even though it doesn’t end up feeling too different from sleeping in the basement. The mattress is better and it’s a luxury not having the free weights be the first thing Patrick sees when he wakes up. Having Jonny out of the house in general is its own kind of relief. It’s exhausting to constantly wonder whether you’re being observed or overheard. It’s exhausting to _care_ whether you’re being overheard—Patrick isn’t used to that. It doesn’t make sense that Patrick cares now; it’s not like Jonny’s opinion of him matters or anything.

Even though he doesn’t sleep there during the Sabres’ roadies, Patrick will hang out in the basement some. It has its advantages. It’s way bigger than Patrick’s bedroom, for starters. It has a TV and a PlayStation and a fridge full of sports drinks. 

For example, the Sabres have an away game tonight, but Patrick is in the basement. Actually, he’s in the basement _because_ the Sabres have an away game. Patrick wants to watch but the girls have claimed the living room TV to watch Gilmore Girls (the synchronicity of East Coast game times and Gilmore Girls is the bane of Patrick’s existence). So he’s back on the pullout couch, eyes glued to the low-res display. 

The Leafs are up 2-0 because the Sabres can’t get organized. The zone entries are sloppy, too many passes and too few of them that connect. Then right at the end of the second, number nineteen gets the puck. He has no back-up, it’s practically a one-on-four, but he powers through the defense single-handedly. There is no stopping him. He powers through a hit, dekes, dekes around someone else, and crashes the net through sheer force of will. He’s so willful, so undaunted that it looks like Jonny already read the spoilers for the game—he knows the puck is going in, doesn’t everyone else? The goal horn hasn’t even sounded yet when the straining of Patricks dick against his boxers gets to the point of discomfort.

Shit. Shit. Okay, nothing to freak out about. Not the first time hockey has gotten him hot. At least he isn’t wearing a cup this time. He fists each hand into the sides of his basketball shorts with conviction and breathes in deep through his nose. Patrick has three options now: cold shower, practicing his shot in the garage, or just ignoring what started him off and making the most of it. Because this is one of those rare few chances for him to jerk off with impunity. No setting the porn to mute, no sweltering under two blankets and a parka to try to muffle the sound, no biting on his hand, no gods, no masters, just Patrick finally jerking off.

Option Three is going swimmingly. It’s no time at all before Patrick’s hips are leaving the couch cushions to meet his hand. It’s been too long if he’s already this riled up. He keeps his mind clear; it’s just good, that’s all. It’s just a normal night. No Sabres game, nothing weird. Two quick twists of the wrist have Patrick groaning from deep in the back of his throat. It makes all his muscles twitch just before making all his muscles freeze: _Fuck,_ the automatic alarm in his brain says. _You can’t make noise like that. He’s gonna hear you._ It’s a full two seconds of holding his breath and letting the intermission ads fill his silence before Patrick remembers Jonny isn’t even here. He deflates. 

It wouldn’t have even been that damning if Jonny were upstairs. Just a little groan. It could be a groan of frustration that Buffalo is trailing, easily explained. Not like if he heard—Patrick sighs, trailing off a little whiny at the end. Or if he heard the telltale slap of Patrick’s hand speeding up. If Jonny heard _that,_ laid up in Patrick’s bed upstairs, reading a book or whatever it is Jonny does with his time, he’d have to know exactly what was happening. Would his face react at all? He’s always so damn placid; it makes Patrick yearn to catch him out, to catch him off guard. Would this do the trick? Would Jonny blush? Patrick could see him making some constipated expression and putting on his noise-cancelers.

But… what if he didn’t? What if Jonny’s face went hot and he kept reading the same sentence over and over? Maybe he’d finally abandon his pretentious book and perk an ear up. He’d hear the way Patrick’s breaths are getting harsher. Maybe he’d have to slip a hand down to adjust himself—he’d definitely hear the way the joints of Patrick’s toes pop when they curl from that mental image. From the thought of Jonny palming himself over one of his pairs of stupid tight shorts, eavesdropping on Patrick and feeling so guilty about it. Jonny’d probably have to throw one leg off the side of the bed to make a little room for himself between those insane thighs, his body splayed out huge over the tiny bed. Jonny’s hair would be fucked up because he’d keep running a hand through it, all conflicted about what he’s doing, and his eyes would go wide when Patrick whispers a broken “Jesus _fuck_ ” to the basement ceiling. The thought of affecting Jonny that much, of messing up that careful discipline, of sparking a reaction out of him—it’s almost narcotic.

Out of habit, Patrick’s left hand automatically starts fumbling around near the floor for his duffel bag where he keeps a bottle of lotion. Mid-search, he remembers himself and oh god, what is Patrick thinking? His hand flies off his dick. This is not okay. Jo— _Toews_ is an asshole. He’s the most infuriating guy Patrick has ever shared oxygen with. Patrick’s more tempted to jack him _up_ than jack him off. He’s a cagey, mercurial walking underwear ad who thinks he’s better than Patrick with his French books and his cooking and his faceoff percentage; he’s a scourge and a douche and why is this not helping? Why in god’s name is Patrick’s dick still into it? “Traitor,” Patrick scolds it. 

Or maybe that’s why his dick is into it. Because it’s _Toews._ When he hears the name outside his own head, Patrick slits his eyes open to find a replay of Jonny’s goal on TV. It’s the intermission report. Jonny barrells down the ice and Patrick is fixated on the sturdiness of him. He can’t stop thinking about how when you viewed the play aerially like this, Jonny was a force of nature; he wasn’t subjected to everyone else on the ice, they were subjected to him. Untouchable. 

It’s driving Patrick crazy. The untouchability. It’d be so satisfying to make the asshole fuck it up, to get a rise out of him. It wouldn’t be impossible. Patrick has caught glimpses of glitches in the tightwad’s perfect veneer in the past. Jonny would fold if Patrick put his mind to it. If he baited Jonny with carefully placed sounds. His hand speeds up on his dick; Patrick isn’t even sure when he started stroking it again. He didn’t mean to. The image of Jonny draped across his bed won’t leave the backs of Patrick’s eyelids. Jonny would’ve tossed a pillow over his head in a halfhearted effort to block the sound of Patrick downstairs. He’d discard it just as quickly, though, and prick up his ears. His broad shoulders would be tight from arousal and guilt. It’s such a vindictively sexy image, Jonny suffering the same inner conflict he’s been putting Patrick through for months.

Jonny would fidget on top of the covers, hands clenching the coverlet to keep from touching himself until that pivotal moment when he’d finally cave and reach into his shorts thinking about his billet brother because at the end of the day Jonny is no better than Patrick.

When Patrick comes, it immediately feels like an own-goal. Like his brain saw the opportunity and fucking went for it without stopping to look at the context. On the other side of his orgasm, Patrick can’t escape the stunned-crowd silence accompanying his regret. Despite being in excellent shape, it takes him a minute just to catch his breath. He doesn’t understand how that was so good aside from the obvious fact that it was so wrong. He was jacking it dry, for Christ’s sake. He usually hates that. 

This is the point where Patrick would worry if he thought he had an actual crush, but he doesn’t. Yeah, Toews is stupid hot, but Patrick hasn’t even creeped on his iTunes Library when it pops up in the ‘shared’ section of Patrick’s sidebar, and everybody knows it’s not a real crush if you haven’t creeped on their iTunes. Case closed. But at this point Patrick has to admit, even though he doesn’t like Toews, he’s definitely into him. 

“I’m ninety percent sure you moved here just to ruin my life,” Patrick croaks at the ceiling.

*

The weekend of the Sabres’ big roadtrip is even better than expected: obviously Patrick’s dad and Jonny are gone, but his mom also took all three sisters on a girls trip to New York for Jackie’s birthday. The house is _his_. All his. He gleefully updates his Facebook status.

_Patrick Kane is: home alooone, txt it bitches_

No clotheshorse sisters clogging up the laundry room, no dad pestering Patrick to go over game tape from the OHL playoffs _again,_ no massive 6’2” slab of distracting indifference throwing Patrick off his game. He’s got two days and he’s going to live them like a fucking king. He gets to whip out the old cord phone in the kitchen and order ungodly amounts of Indian takeout that no one else in his family eats. He gets to blast _Now That’s What I Call Music! Volume 7_ and any other gold his iTunes can produce without anyone saying a word about it. He gets to do all this in his boxers. 

Laundry isn’t something he’s particular about at all really. Patrick doesn’t put much thought into his clothes to begin with, let alone the care and keeping of them. But before he left for Michigan, his mom made it clear that since he was leaving the nest, he needed to know how to do these things for himself. The sentiment was nice, but basically she forces him to do his own, even when he’s home. (She still offers to help Jonny with his, just so you know.) It’s a full house to say the least, but at last the laundry room is all his. He plucks a warm tank top from the dryer and lays it across his eyes like a hot towel. 

It isn’t exactly a weekend off. Patrick still has a full workout schedule and a local rink reserved for a friendly game of pickup in the morning. Leg day was particularly brutal this morning; Patrick is still feeling it. But it was easier to get through knowing he would have tonight to eat whatever he wanted and watch some hockey. Not the Sabres-Flames game. Well, maybe later. If he has time. It’s okay if he doesn’t have time; Patrick barely misses a Sabres game. Nothing wrong with taking a night off. It’s not like he’s avoiding tonight’s matchup just because he popped one measly boner for his nemesis’ hockey. ( _Two boners,_ his brain supplies. _Don’t forget Sweden._ But those stats are cherry-picked and Patrick ignores them.) He just has other hockey to watch. Specifically, Game 4 of the OHL Conference Finals. He DVR’ed it a couple days ago so he could watch that Sabres-Toronto game instead. It’s Guelph versus Sault Ste Marie and all Patrick knows about the result is that Carter’s team suffered a spectacular meltdown to lose the series 0-4. He’s looking forward to watching it. With popcorn. Movie butter popcorn.

Erica comments on his status, _shut up u miss us_ , but for once, it isn’t true.

There’s Janet Jackson on his speakers. There’s a swing to his hips because Patrick is human and happy. There’s hot butter chicken on the way, there’s no squats left for him to do, there’s harmony in the universe, and there’s a man in his kitchen. 

There’s a man in his kitchen.

The yelp that’s jolted out of Patrick is about three notes too high for comfort. He drops the shorts he was folding. Jonny is standing in the kitchen with a clamshell of premade salad and a stunned expression, like he can’t decide between disbelief and delight.

Patrick didn’t hear the front door shut. How long has Jonny been standing there watching Patrick in his boxers? Or, not ‘watching,’ just… 

While Jonny’s mouth works, apparently starting and abandoning several sentences, Patrick manages, “W-what the hell are you doing here?” Standing here in his boxers suddenly feels very different. He’d been doing a successful job of totally blocking out that fantasy from the other night, of avoiding Jonny altogether, until just now. So much for that. Fucking Jonny.

“Is this what you do the minute you’re alone?” Jonny tries for a straight face but a little quirk at the corner of his mouth can’t help twisting up. Patrick hates Jonny. He hates Jonny’s expressions and his jawline and his uncanny ability to make Patrick feel embarrassed. 

“You’re supposed to be in Calgary,” Patrick bites out in lieu of a response. “And what’s wrong with doing laundry?” Patrick chews on the inside of his cheek hard enough to hurt. He’s not doing anything weird. 

Jonny’s black stare is undaunted. He just maintains soul-sucking eye contact as Patrick’s computer gushes, _“All my girls at the party, look at his body, shakin’ that thing like I never did see. Got a nice package alright, guess I'm gonna have to ride it tonight…”_

Dammit, Janet.

For a long, still moment, nothing is said. Patrick chews on his cheek and waits for an explanation. Jonny shouldn’t be here and he shouldn’t be able to make Patrick feel the way he does. It’s not _fair. ___

__“I thought someone would’ve told you that I got held back from the trip,” Jonny says, regaining a little composure. As the stunned amusement slowly fades from his face, an underlying layer of frustration is revealed. Jonny looks away for the first time. “Fugue… stuff,” he says before Patrick can ask. There’s always so much trailing off when Jonny’s forced to talk about sentinel junk. You’d think the guy would be used to it by now, it being his life and all._ _

__“Are you like…” They’re both playing the trail-off game. The playing field is uneven now; Patrick doesn’t know how to behave when Jonny’s mental stability is on the line. Why can’t the fucker ever play fair?_ _

__“I’m fine. Team doc wouldn’t have dropped me off if he didn’t think so. It’s just happened… often recently.” He lets out an annoyed exhale and drops his hulking duffel bag in the hallway. Whether he’s annoyed at the situation or annoyed at Patrick for asking is uncertain._ _

__“What’s been often?” Patrick asks in spite of himself. He surreptitiously moves to turn the volume down on his _Now!_ CD, cheeks still hot._ _

__Jonny turns to side-eye Patrick pointedly. They don’t talk about sentinel stuff. At all. After a moment, he responds. “Slip-ups. Little lapses in concentration. Since we already clinched, they figured it would be safest to just bench me till then.” The more Jonny talks, the tighter his posture gets like just thinking about the situation makes him want to punch something._ _

__Great. Now Patrick is embarrassed _and_ concerned. He’s beginning to forget what it felt like to ever be in control over his emotions. “So, you’re not gonna, like…” Patrick’s trailing off again, opting to make vague explosion gestures with his hands. _ _

__Jonny rolls his eyes, either peeved or insulted by the extremely reasonable question. “I’m fucking fine. Everyone is just creaming their pants to treat me like I’m glass.”_ _

__Wow, so it’s gonna be like that? The cocktail of humiliation and unwanted worry has made Patrick’s throat feel tight and his mouth taste sour. He’d be more than happy to match Jonny jab for jab. “You have great fucking timing. This was gonna be my weekend off,” Patrick grouses, casting his eyes over the takeout menu and unoccupied TV. “With no one to _bother_ me.”_ _

__For some reason, that gets Jonny’s hackles up. His shoulders curve toward each other like he’s been hit. “It’s not like I wanna hang out with you either. Get over yourself, I’m here because I have to be. Not gonna get in the way of your ‘big plans,’” Jonny bites, finger quotes and all._ _

__“Yeah right, Bubble Boy. My plans were loud 90s music, spicy food, and surround-sound speakers. I’m pretty sure none of those fit into whatever meditation station your sorry ass needs right now.”_ _

__“Oh no,” Jonny mocks. “You mean you have to change your plans?” He adds a little gasp of horror for effect. “I feel _so bad_ for you. That must feel just awful,” he spits. Jonny kicks his sneakers off in the middle of the room and leaves them there, trudging to the fridge in his socks. _ _

__Patrick scoffs. “Yeah, make yourself at home.” He turns back to his basket of unfolded shit._ _

__From behind his back, he hears Jonny say, “What is your problem?” As if Jonny could be oblivious to the raging asshole he’s being right now._ _

__“Like I said: my weekend’s fucking spoiled,” Patrick grumbles._ _

__“Yeah? And how do you think I feel?” Jonny snaps._ _

__Patrick flushes, face hot with belligerence but also with a little shame because that’s a fair hit. He keeps his back turned so Jonny won’t see how well he’s getting under Patrick’s skin. “How should I know?” It’s not like Jonny’s shared jackshit with him._ _

__“God, you’re such a dick,” Jonny scoffs._ _

__“And you’re an asshole.”_ _

__“Only around you. Jesus, Gandhi would be an asshole around you. I dunno how you do it.” Oh please, Patrick thinks. Patrick doesn’t make Jonny an asshole, he just sees through that perfect little facade Jonny’s always peddling._ _

__“Fuck off,” says Patrick. Now he’s standing square with Jonny, imagining that he can see static electricity sparking angrily in the space between them. Maybe if Patrick can bait Jonny into throwing the first punch, Patrick’s mom won’t be quite so displeased about Patrick socking his billet brother in the gut. ‘Cause that second part is looking like an eventuality, at this point._ _

__It’s a standoff, save for the split second when Jonny’s eyes flick down over Patrick—a sudden and distracting reminder that he’s wearing nothing but boxers. Patrick’s skin prickles hot and cold all over under the attention._ _

__“You fuck off,” Jonny says. His nose flares. The air in the room has a haywire rawness to it._ _

__This crackle, this scatterbrained frustration—is this sentinel shit? Patrick takes a thoughtless step forward, not even sure what he’s intending to do. Hard to believe that sixty seconds ago, Patrick was happily grooving his way into a carefree weekend. Now he’s just stressed, yet again. Stuck in the house with the last person he wanted to see here._ _

__The doorbell rings._ _

__The food. It’s here twenty minutes earlier than Patrick expected, so he has to hunt down his wallet and jog to the door. He only remembers his shirtlessness at the last moment, but he figures the good people of Taj Grill have seen worse and swings the door open._ _

__“How much do I o—oh my god,” Patrick stops short. “ _Carter?_ ”_ _

__“Waddup, P Kane! Surprise!” Carter fucking MacLean stands on the Kane residence doorstep like a prodigal son._ _

__“What,” Patrick tries before starting again, wallet hanging uselessly in his hand. “What are you doing here?”_ _

__Carter smiles, cheerfully oblivious to any rudeness and unwelcome sent in his direction. “Came to see you, obviously! We got knocked out by Sault Ste Marie, I’m sure you saw, so now I’m taking my car back down to Florida. But I saw your Facebook status and thought I’d take a detour to drop in on my best buddy.” He looks so pleased with himself. There’s a fading bruise on his jaw._ _

__(How can Carter look so self-satisfied after a playoffs exit like that? It took Patrick weeks to shake off his own team’s collapse, to come to terms with the fact that he wouldn’t be on the ice every night anymore and that it was his own fault. If Patrick were Carter, he wouldn’t be loose and confident; he’d be riled up and taking it out on whoever he could. Which is… yeah, probably what Jonny’s deal is right now.)_ _

__Looking distinctly un-riled up, Carter’s eyes slip down Patrick’s body. “Did you just get out of bed?”_ _

__Patrick focuses on the more important questions. “No text, no heads up?”_ _

__“Sorry,” Carter says, not sounding the slightest bit sorry. “I thought I’d surprise you, like old times. Plus, you’ve been ignoring my texts. Maybe you’re too cool for me these days.” So he had noticed. And still, he refused to take the hint. Or worse, Patrick just piqued Carter’s interest by hurting his pride. Like Carter has something to prove now. Actually, maybe Patrick should’ve seen this coming._ _

__“It’s been a while since we’ve hung out,” Carter braces a forearm against the doorframe and leans into it, lax and cocky. The words are fairly innocuous; Carter’s tone does all the heavy lifting. “Didn’t want to waste an opportunity. Especially when you’ve got the place to yourself…”_ _

__Before Patrick can figure out how to untangle _that_ , the door creaks further open behind him and Jonny is at his shoulder like he’s been there from the start, solid and close enough that Patrick can feel his body heat._ _

__“Hey,” Jonny says. He and Carter are roughly the same height in theory, but Carter somehow still has to tilt back his head to address Jonny. Patrick’s kind of enjoying watching the cocksurity drain from Carter’s pose, leaving him somewhat shrivelled._ _

__“Hey, man. Carter MacLean.” He holds his hand out to shake._ _

__There’s a pause while Patrick waits for Jonny’s hand to shoot out from behind him, but it never happens. Mr. Perfect himself is turning down a handshake. He simply says, “Jonathan Toews.”_ _

__Carter breaks the charged eye contact to glance back at Patrick, darting quickly down to the only article of clothing Patrick’s state of undress is comprised of. “Yeah. I think we met at World Juniors.”_ _

__Jonny says nothing._ _

__“That was a crazy shootout, bro. Have to hand it to you.”_ _

__“It was a team effort,” Jonny says, his response canned and immediate even though it’s an odd thing to say about a shootout._ _

__Carter’s eventual, “Coool,” is slanted and strained._ _

__“Sorry to hear about your team getting knocked out.” If Jonny’s words weren’t delivered in such a flawlessly bland tone, Patrick might suspect him of provoking Carter. He’s still standing just behind Patrick in the doorway and Patrick can’t see his expression at all._ _

__“Sucks about the injuries this season,” Carter tells him with an equal amount of sympathy._ _

__Crickets._ _

__“...Come on in,” Patrick says because, fuck, what else is he supposed to say? Erica is the mediator in the family; Patrick has zero job experience in the position. He passes Jonny in the hallway, pulling faces at the ceiling when he hits the living room because when exactly did this become an open house for Patrick’s nemeses?_ _

__He should probably put a shirt on, too, but when he turns to find his stack of laundry, Jonny is already holding one out for him. Patrick squints at him as he takes it, but Jonny pays no attention, facing the living room with as stony an exterior as Patrick has ever seen on him. And that is saying something._ _

__Patrick’s still eyeing Jonny curiously when Carter coughs for his attention off to his right. “Oh,” Patrick says. “Uh help yourself to a drink from the fridge, man.”_ _

__“Thanks, Kaner.”_ _

__Jonny’s eyes flick over to Carter at the nickname. Patrick doesn’t know why he’s looking annoyed—ugh, Patrick doesn’t know why he’s looking at Jonny. Again. He blinks hard to clear his head and refocus on the kitchen where his intruder is pilfering a soda from the fridge._ _

__“So what’s going on tonight? What’s the plan?” Carter asks, slung backwards into a seat at the kitchen counter._ _

___The plan._ Patrick wants to let out a wry laugh. The plan was to do whatever tickled his fucking fancy while his enemies were safely quarantined in a whole other country. Now, apparently, he’s hosting a tea party for them. _ _

__“I thought the Sabres had a game. Isn’t that why your dad’s out?” Carter slides his eyes over to where Jonny leans against a wall messing with his phone. Though the question is obviously about him, Jonny doesn’t even glance up to acknowledge Carter. This would seriously be the most Patrick has ever liked Jonny if he weren’t concerned about a fight breaking out in his living room. Actually, on second thought, Patrick would watch the hell out of that fight._ _

__“They’re having Jonny rest up before the playoffs,” Patrick explains when it’s clear that Jonny isn’t going to._ _

__“Then let’s go out, dude. It’s Friday night! Whatever happened to that divey joint you told me about that never cards?”_ _

__Patrick grimaces, searching the room for an out. When his gaze passes over Jonny, he’s surprised to find his eyes on Patrick, unglued from the screen of his cell phone. He’s darting his eyes between Patrick and Carter trying to figure them out. Patrick decides that Jonny can draw whatever conclusions he wants, as long as he doesn’t leave Patrick alone with this douche. “Sounds fun, but I have some food on the way already. And I, uh, promised I’d stay in with Jonny tonight. He’s taking it easy.”_ _

__“Oh, word?” Carter says tepidly. He glances over to the guy in question then jerks his gaze back to Patrick like he’s been burnt. Burnt by the force of Jonny’s epic bitchface. “Cool… cool.”_ _

__At first, Patrick thinks the bitchface is in protest of Patrick using him as his cover story, but when Jonny notices Patrick looking, he slips back into an opaque mask of indifference._ _

__Carter recaptures Patrick’s attention by repositioning his chair with a loud squeak. Now angled with his back to Jonny, Carter makes a little face at Patrick and mouths, _He’s intense,_ punctuating with a spinning finger at his temple. Even under the current circumstances, Patrick can’t help laughing because, well. True. Carter relaxes in his seat. “So just a chill hang here?”_ _

__Patrick’s muscle memory is too buff. It automatically choreographs a shrug, though Patrick is pulling a face and has no idea how he wants to respond yet._ _

__Carter takes the shrug as an affirmative, stretching out to make himself more comfortable. Like piecing together an opponent’s potential play on the ice, an idea flashes inside Patrick’s brain and, shit, Patrick really, really hopes this guy isn’t thinking he’s staying the night. The thought stuns Patrick quiet for a beat. Silence stretches out between them, as awkward and unwanted as an uninvited guest._ _

__The doorbell rings._ _

__“There’s the food.” Patrick is up and to the door like lightning, grateful for any interruption but especially grateful that it’s dinner. He’s starving._ _

__He pulls the door open and dear god what is happening tonight._ _

__“Meredith?”_ _

__“Hey, Patrick,” she says with a one third of a smile, looking him right in the eyes. He’s always liked her directness. It’s what made him so sure they both had the same expectations of each other during their no-strings flings last year. “I saw on Facebook that you were in town and—”_ _

__Patrick is deleting his Facebook._ _

__“Look,” Patrick stops her, completely in over his head with the events of the evening, “I’m really sorry if that Facebook status seemed like… an invitation or something,” clearly there was some kind of subtext Patrick did _not_ intend, “but I—”_ _

__“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Meredith says, putting a hand up. “I just want my Dave CD back. I have only. Ever. Wanted my Dave CD back. But you don’t respond to my texts. It’s my concert recording, okay? It’s my only copy.” She looks at him for a beat. “Tim Reynolds was there.”_ _

__Patrick is struck dumb because, welp, how do you come back from a situation like this? “I, um…”_ _

__“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. Is it in your car?”_ _

__Patrick blinks and simply walks her around to the garage, not going through the house because the last thing he needs is his past hookup, his nightmare hookup, and his dream hookup—fuckfuckonedisasteratatimefuck—all in one room. The CD is easy to track down in the Jeep because Patrick never took it out of his case to begin with. Not a huge Dave Matthews guy._ _

__“Did you want Natalie Merchant back, too?” He’s pretty sure he can hunt that CD down too, though that one _has_ left its case. (What? Patrick has a heart just like everyone else.)_ _

__“Nah, she’s all yours,” says Meredith._ _

__Crickets. “I’m sorry about that. This,” Patrick manages gracelessly, rubbing the back of his neck._ _

__She rolls her eyes, but in a good-natured way. “It’s okay. I’m sure you’ll be right about the next ten girls that text you.” Her eyes twinkle in the shitty garage lighting. Patrick ought to keep in touch with this girl, musical priorities notwithstanding._ _

__“Anyways,” Meredith says, “I’ll let you get back to it. Big night?”_ _

__“In spite of my best efforts.”_ _

__Outside the side door to the garage, there’s a view into the kitchen where Jonny and Carter are sitting. Patrick has no clue what they could be talking about; Carter’s back is to him. Jonny’s face is tense and a little murderous. It’s not at all a bad look for him._ _

__Over Patrick’s shoulder, Meredith peeks in. “And where did you find _him_?” The note of interest in her voice makes Patrick twitch._ _

__How can he begin to explain Jonny or how Patrick got to this point in his life? Instead of trying, Patrick just snorts at the predicament he’s found himself in and tells Meredith, “He’s a rescue.”_ _

__Patrick walks her to where her car is parked on the street behind Carter’s 4Runner. When they reach it, she turns to face him. “Well, good luck with the draft and everything. I hope you’re doing okay.”_ _

__Patrick huffs a laugh and glances back at the house behind him, windows glowing gold in the twilight. “I will be.” One disaster at a time. He turns back to Meredith and pulls her into a hug because anyone who can forgive douchebaggery of tonight’s order is okay in Patrick’s book. “Take care of yourself. I’ll see you around.”_ _

__“You too, Pat,” she says, sliding into the driver's seat with a long, amused look that strongly implies she thinks he’s a total mess. He looks himself over to discover he still isn’t wearing pants. She might not be wrong._ _

__Back at the front door, he takes a timeout for some me-time. He spends all of it banging his head against the wall therapeutically before walking inside to face the next disaster._ _

__“Sick, right?” Carter is saying. Or that’s what Patrick thinks he’s saying; it’s hard to hear him over the dubstep blowing the speakers out on Carter’s iPod. From the seat next to Carter, Jonny catches Patrick’s eye, the suffering look of a cat in a bathtub. Then the bass drops and Jonny looks one step away from murdering Carter in cold blood. But he’s still clearly unwilling to tell Carter he’s giving Jonny a headache or admit to any other weaknesses._ _

__It shouldn’t be surprising, in light of what Patrick saw from Jonny leading up to the WJC, but it’s still something to behold, the guy’s pride holding up under the onslaught of such terrible music. It would be admirable if it weren’t so stupid._ _

__“Turn that shit down,” Patrick says easily, dropping into the seat next to Jonny._ _

__“Food’s here?” Carter says, looking around, oblivious to every single thing going on._ _

__“Nah, that was just a friend of mine picking up a CD I borrowed.”_ _

__From the sardonic glint in Jonny’s eye, he heard every word of Patrick’s disastrous conversation with Meredith. Great. The whole world is against Patrick tonight. Thankfully, Jonny’s phone buzzes and he takes his mocking, knowing looks over to the living room couch._ _

__“So, what’s a guy gotta do to get a drink around here?” Carter grins._ _

__With strategic forethought unprecedented to him outside of the rink, Patrick realizes that if they start drinking, Carter won’t be able to drive off. And then with belated clarity that’s more characteristic, Patrick realizes that Carter probably meant to stay the night from the start. What an exhausting, awkward prospect. He spies an unfamiliar duffel in the hallway. Had Carter brought that in with him? When? Patrick hadn’t noticed at all._ _

__“Well, Jonny can’t drink with the rest the team has him on. Strict rest. And, you know, solidarity,” Patrick bullshits._ _

__Carter gives him an incredulous look, because yeah, it is pretty uncharacteristic of Patrick. “Dude, that blows.” Carter glances over in Jonny’s direction. He doubtless remembers Patrick being less than complimentary of Jonathan Toews during the WJC. In hushed tones he gripes “We can’t go out, we can’t drink, can’t do any of the fun stuff I was looking forward to when I thought it was just gonna be us.”_ _

__Carter obviously knows Jonny is a sentinel, so it’s unclear whether Carter forgot Jonny would be able to hear him or just didn’t expect Jonny to call him on it. Either way, he looks surprised when Jonny pipes up from the couch._ _

__“What kind of fun were you expecting to get up to?” The potentially innocent question is belied beyond a reasonable doubt by Jonny’s pointed tone and calmly venomous side-eye._ _

__Carter blinks. Jonny doesn’t. Patrick is blindsided by the fact that Jonny seems to know exactly what’s going on here. Well, he thinks faintly, at least one person here should. Less faintly, Patrick thinks something needs to be done before there’s a fistfight in his living room._ _

__“Who are you even pretending to text over there?” Patrick says, just to derail Jonny’s line of inquiry._ _

__“Oh! You know who I’ve been texting?” Carter jumps in like that isn’t the flimsiest segue in the history of weekend-ruining house crashers. “JVR.” Poor JVR. “Dude claims he can’t be killed in CoD. We should—”_ _

__“I don’t have _Call of Duty,_ ” Patrick lies. A faint noise makes Patrick glance over to the couch just in time to catch Jonny smiling to himself. Jonny is angled away from their conversation again, pretending like he’s not involved, and unaware he’s being observed. Patrick blinks, unexpectedly beguiled by the private, satisfied little smirk that says Jonny knows exactly what Patrick is doing._ _

__“Dude, what? How in the…” Carter is sputtering theatrically, but Patrick doesn’t catch the rest of what he’s saying. His eyes are still caught on Jonny and the marvel of his face souring the longer Carter talks. Meanwhile, Carter just seems to get more and more rambunctious the longer he goes ignored. Everything that leaves his mouth is spoken to the tune of ‘Hey! Look at me! Over here!’_ _

__“...bet you broke it after losing. Didn’t you, Kaner? Classic, dude! No sweat, I’ve got us covered. I’ve got everything from Guelph out in the car. We’ll use—”_ _

__“Sorry,” Jonny interrupts, standing to join them in the kitchen. It’s true that when Jonny is confused he looks real angry. But when Jonny is actually pissed, he just gets taller. He’s quite tall at the moment. “To be honest, I’ve got a fugue coming on. I think you should leave.”_ _

__Patrick looks up stunned, but Jonny is facing Carter, not him, so Patrick can’t see Jonny’s expression. Patrick isn’t stunned because it’s a lie (and it’s definitely a lie), he’s stunned because Jonny won’t cop to this kind of vulnerability even when it’s the truth. Half an hour ago, they were screaming at each other._ _

__When Carter looks to Patrick, it’s a moment before Patrick can even speak he’s so blindsided. “It’s why he’s not with the team. We knew this might happen. Bad timing, man. Let’s, uh, just head this way, here.” Patrick herds Carter towards the door with a hand that stops just short of touching the guy’s back. While Carter picks up his duffel bag, Patrick looks over his shoulder to give Jonny a look of the most potent gratitude he can muster._ _

___Thank you,_ he mouths, still in awe. Jonny just looks on, a tiny, secretive smile stealing onto his face. _ _

__For effect, Patrick switches off the living room lights as he herds Carter along the entryway. “It’s better for him if it’s dark,” he explains. And then, before Carter can say anything, Patrick says, “It was good to see you, man. Sorry this didn’t work out, but I’ll see you at the combine, eh?”_ _

__Carter looks dizzy. Not even Carter MacLean’s irrepressible entitlement could survive in the face of such a firm dismissal. “Yeah,” he manages. “I guess I’ll see you there.”_ _

__Lax from relief, Patrick leans in the doorframe in a cheerful reversal of fortunes from when Carter first arrived. “Better train hard.”_ _

__“Ha,” Carter chuffs weakly, walking backwards towards his car._ _

__Patrick just waves and shuts the door. He locks it for his peace of mind. Padding into the dark house, he finds a seat at the kitchen table to melt into._ _

__“The lights were a nice touch, but you can turn them back on if you want,” says Jonny from across the table._ _

__“Let’s wait until we’re sure he’s gone.”_ _

__Patrick isn’t joking in the slightest, but Jonny laughs and Patrick really ought to make him laugh more. It’s a nice laugh to listen to. Patrick takes a moment to wind down, slumped over the cool kitchen table with his face smushed against it. It should be weird, sitting with Jonny in the dark, but he’s too relieved to feel anything but boneless._ _

__Jonny keeps his voice low like they’re being surveilled. “And I thought you hated _me_. Shoulda been grateful you didn’t send me packing like that.”_ _

__“I kinda feel bad,” Patrick mumbles._ _

__“No you don’t.”_ _

__He should, though. “He probably doesn’t have a place to stay tonight.”_ _

__“That’s his fault.”_ _

__“Still—”_ _

__The doorbell rings._ _

__“—I take it back,” Patrick rasps quickly, his voice tired and pitiful. What kind of torture is this? “I take it back!”_ _

__“I’ll get it.” Jonny stands. “I don’t care if that little turd left his Pacemaker here.”_ _

__It’s a true comfort that Jonny dislikes Carter as much as Patrick does, albeit for different reasons. It’s also a huge comfort that Jonny volunteers, since Patrick isn’t sure he has the wherewithal to stand._ _

__“Your food’s here,” Jonny calls from the front door._ _

__Patrick’s recovery is nothing short of miraculous. He’s at the door in a heartbeat._ _

__“... so sorry the food is so late,” the delivery guy is saying._ _

__“That’s okay,” Patrick says sincerely. If it had come any sooner, keeping their unwanted guest from staying for dinner would have been pretty much impossible. Well, maybe not impossible for Jonny, Patrick allows. The balls on that guy. “You’re right on time.”_ _

__Patrick tips extravagantly and hauls the bags to the kitchen. He’s kind of looking forward to jawing with Jonny over who gets the upstairs and who gets the basement._ _

__In the kitchen, Jonny’s got the lights back on and he’s rooting around the fridge. He grabs his pathetic spinach salad and a water bottle before heading towards the basement. “I’ll let you get back to your big night. I’ll be in the basement.”_ _

__Fucking Jonny, folding right away and taking the fun out of everything. Canadians clearly don’t understand how these things work. No wonder they got the shit part of the continent. Still, Jonny’s gesture softens Patrick up._ _

__“Hey,” Patrick says before Jonny can disappear down the hall. Patrick bites his lip, fully aware he’s crossing over into uncharted territory. Jonny hesitates. “Stay.” Patrick clears his throat. “Um, you should stay. We’ve got a ton of food here.”_ _

__Jonny looks over his shoulder from the steaming bags and then back to his clamshell of salad, visibly swallowing. “I love Indian food.”_ _

__“Great.” Patrick smiles and sets about teasing the knotted plastic handles loose._ _

__Aromatic steam curls up from the gaps in the containers, closely watched by Jonny like a stiff breeze of it could topple him. He looks impossibly young and conflicted. “I’m not allowed to have Indian food.”_ _

__“Live a little,” Patrick says, prizing open the massive takeout bags with alacrity. If shit goes awry, he can snap Jonny out of it. He’s done it before. It’s the least Patrick can do; if Jonny weren’t here, Patrick shudders to think how tonight would have gone._ _

__Patrick assembles a formidable bowl of rice and butter chicken with the entire container of garlic naan balanced atop it and grabs a beer out of the fridge with his free hand. As he moves to the dining table, he peers over his shoulder. Jonny is staring at him. He hasn’t moved a millimeter._ _

__“Well?”_ _

__When Jonny makes up his mind, the little traces of glee that tweak his features are artless and unpracticed. Patrick would guess that he bends the rules far too little._ _

__“Yo, bring spoons!”_ _

__The look on Jonny’s face when he takes his first bite is something out of a Catholic fresco—not because of classical beauty or any shit like that. It’s just his reverence. Jonny’s eyes actually flutter shut and Patrick can feel the way his senses are overcome, a sudden crackle in the air._ _

__When Jonny’s eyes open again, Patrick just grins at him over his beer. “Right?”_ _

__Jonny drops his head into his hand. “All these years,” he mutters to himself._ _

__Patrick can’t imagine tasting butter chicken after a decade of undressed oatmeal and spinach. He takes a minute to try, letting the sauce sit on his tongue while he tries to peel back the flavors one by one. It’s an entire symphony. The salt, the fat, the aromatics: cumin, coriander, chili powder, hot curry powder, garlic, bright tomato, something floral, something earthy, something a different kind of spicy, something sweet. Patrick isn’t great with spices. Something herbal and nuanced; maybe those weird dry pods with the ridges and seeds._ _

__“Cardamom?” says Jonny._ _

__“Yeah, cardamom.” Wait. Patrick never said anything._ _

__“Wasn’t sure. I know the smell but I haven’t tasted it for years.” Upon further inspection, Jonny is caught up in his own gustatory investigation, not psychically spying on Patrick’s. Jonny takes a measured whiff of the steam rising from his bowl and his exhale twists into a reverent sigh. “Why isn’t cardamom in everything?”_ _

__“Preach.” Patrick can feel what he now recognizes as guide sensitivity, as a connectivity to Jonny’s senses. The little strings tug at Patrick. Now that it’s not so frantic as it was at World Juniors, the feeling is kind of pleasant. Like a buzz. “Naan?”_ _

__After Jonny takes longer than ten seconds to think over his decision, Patrick wordlessly presents Jonny with a generous hunk of garlic naan that’s buttery enough to glisten. Patrick only has normal human hearing, but he doesn’t miss the half-swallowed noise squeezed out of Jonny when the naan hits his tongue. The atmosphere changes on Patrick in a heartbeat; it’s like his shower turning piping hot all at once._ _

__Patrick clears his throat. “Are you allowed to, like, watch stuff?”_ _

__“About as allowed as I am to eat this.” Jonny slips him a troublemaker’s smirk, one Patrick’s never seen on Jonny’s face before. “What did you have in mind?”_ _

__Patrick registers a slight pain in his cheek before he registers the fact that he’s smiling back wide as anything. Even more belatedly comes the realization that they’re kind of friends, he and Jonny. Actual friends._ _

__“Trust me, you’re gonna enjoy it,” Patrick says, fumbling around for the TiVo remote._ _

__They don’t even have to wait until the second period to see Carter get laid out by a Sault Ste Marie defenseman—a stocky piece of work who’s probably three inches shorter than Carter but rooted to the ice like a mighty oak. Carter had no business taking him on even if that slewfoot was intentional, primarily because his team was already down by two and could have used a power play, but also because his attempt to push the d-man around resembled a bird flying into a window._ _

__“Oh!” Patrick and Jonny crow in unison as Carter hits the ice. That explains the bruise on his jaw. Eyes glued to the screen, Jonny reaches blindly for the samosa carton and clutches it like it’s a tub of popcorn. They pass it between themselves, munching and laughing. It’s not the worst Friday night Patrick’s ever had._ _

__It’s all surprisingly civil and diplomatic. Jonny doesn’t ask if Carter is his ex and Patrick doesn’t ask if Jonny got a boner from their takeout. That makes them even, Patrick figures._ _

__The rest of the game is sloppy and mismatched. It might’ve been a bore, but once the food is gone, they start picking apart the game. Patrick’s appetite for comfort food is deep, but his appetite for hockey talk is bottomless. Jonny’s a fresh perspective and a captive audience. Time flies by right under Patrick’s nose._ _

__In the dying minutes of the third period, Jonny says, “So what’s next? Does that Meredith chick have any hockey fight highlights you wanna watch?”_ _

__Patrick tries to laugh, but the lingering humiliation from his encounter with Meredith extrudes the laugh in the shape of something strangled and sad. He hides his face in a couch cushion. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”_ _

__“Who’s Dave, anyways?”_ _

__“Dave Matthews,” Patrick explains to the cushion. “Real fans call him ‘Dave.’”_ _

__“You’re a real Dave Matthews fan?”_ _

__“And what if I was, Our Lady Peace? You wanna fight about it?”_ _

__“Like you could take me,” Jonny scoffs._ _

__“Please.” Patrick knocks him half-heartedly with his knee. “All I need is some dubstep. Boom, instant K.O.”_ _

__“That’s cheating.”_ _

__“A wise man once told me that if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying hard enough.”_ _

__“Hmmm,” Jonny hums, leaning to prop his feet on the coffee table. “He _does_ sound pretty wise. Handsome, too.”_ _

__Just because Jonny’s right doesn’t mean he should be tolerated. Patrick steals the last samosa out of pettiness._ _

__The handshake line plays out on screen, Patrick stretches and gets to his feet. “Beer?” he asks on his way to the fridge._ _

__“I don’t drink.”_ _

__“Never?” he calls from the kitchen. “You don’t like it or?”_ _

__“Or,” Jonny confirms. “Not worth the risk, yadda yadda. I’ve gone out a coupla times, but it kinda kills the fun if you’ve gotta be all vigilant the whole time.”_ _

__Patrick will grant him that one. Plopping back down on the couch, he wonders aloud, “What if you went out with someone who could have your back?” He hurriedly amends, “I mean, what if you went _drinking_ with someone who could have your back?”_ _

__Jonny is occupied putting away a truly awe-inspiring amount of naan, but the question gives him pause. He evaluates Patrick with a long, serious look. How are his eyes so dark? Patrick’s already been looking longer than is socially acceptable and he _still_ hasn’t found the guy’s pupils._ _

__“It could work,” Jonny says eventually._ _

__“You ever wanna test it out, you know where to find me. I can get you up to speed, teach you how to knock’em back with the best of’em.”_ _

__Jonny snorts meanly._ _

__“Hey,” Patrick warns, but the effect is spoiled by the smiling. “I’m over here being extreeemely,” he knocks his head back to stretch out the syllable, bestowing a wide self-aware grin upon the ceiling, “accommodating and friendly like. Watch it.”_ _

__“Rather watch hockey,” Jonny says and Patrick’s never gonna turn that down. “Sabres-Flames?” Jonny suggests. Patrick lights up and showily flips the remote in the air. He cracks his neck and prepares to deliver Jonny the gospel on every single thing wrong with Buffalo’s power play, in whatever order they present themselves._ _

____

*

By the time Patrick wakes up, Jonny’s already left for an appointment with their neighbor Justine, the professional guide. He’ll be out till noon, says his note in the kitchen, in case Patrick has more laundry dancing he needs to do. Just because the note makes Patrick laugh doesn’t mean it can’t also make Patrick tear it into tiny pieces and sprinkle them vindictively around Jonny’s sleeping area. It’s 10:00 now, so Patrick himself needs to leave for the icetime he and some buddies reserved at his local rink for a game of pick-up.

He’s sitting on the garage steps tying his sneakers, backwards cap hastily tucked over his curls, whole banana clenched sideways in his teeth so he can eat it on the drive over. 

“Running late?” Jonny strolls in through the open garage door looking rested and pleased with himself. 

“Ershuposhtapiachushteens,” Patrick says around the unpeeled banana, not bothering to straighten his wild appearance.

“We finished early,” Jonny shrugs, hands in pockets. 

Patrick isn’t really sure how you could speed through a professional guide appointment when you’re on the edge of a fugue. He pictures Justine with her long white braids swaying as she chucks a crystal at Jonny’s forehead. _Poof!_ you’re all better, kid. “You didn’t skip, did you?” Patrick squints.

Jonny rolls his eyes dismissively but with good humor. “I was just starting to stand you. Don’t push it.”

Patrick knows basically jack shit about being a for real guide, so he drops it. Hell, he doesn’t even know what they _do_ at Justine’s. 

“So what’re you up to now?” Patrick asks, remembering to finish tying his shoes. He can’t be late. Patrick’s been looking forward to this informal scrimmage for weeks. With the OHL season over, the time has passed to demonstrate his game to NHL scouts. All Patrick can do now, and all he’s been doing, is work on his conditioning for the combine. So he’s chomping at the bit to play some real(ish) hockey. 

Jonny hums noncommittally, saying nothing in a way that says very eloquently, I have no plans and will probably split my time between re-sorting my supplements and pedalling a bike that goes nowhere. He probably feels the same way Patrick does, all cooped-up.

Patrick glances around the garage mulling this over before discreetly sliding his eyes to Jonny’s. “Wanna come to the rink?”

The rebellious gleam in Jonny’s eye is starting to become Patrick’s familiar friend.

*

“Well,” Patrick tries to say, but it comes out more like _whhhh,_ lost amidst his attempts to catch his breath.

Jonny’s panting beside him on the bench. Neither of them seems to know what to say. Gut feelings aside, they couldn’t have been prepared for this. It was terrible: it was _amazing._ Patrick has never played like that before. No one has ever played like that before.

Patrick tips back his helmet to scrub at his face, then spits, trying to tamp down the feeling. They weren’t even playing a proper game, he tells himself, there was nothing to get excited about. Still, Jonny looks winded too and Patrick has intimate knowledge that it’s not because of any lapses in his conditioning. 

“Well,” Jonny breathes.

That scrimmage was no-look passes and tape-to-tape all the way through. The fact that they were an NHL player and a first-overall-contender playing against Patrick’s childhood buddies didn’t detract from the spooky synchronicity, from hockey that felt like breathing. Of course, they were put on opposing teams to start, for fairness, and there were ripples of awareness, like a baby cousin to the mind-bend at the WJC. 

“Pass me that towel?”

Then they were on each other’s side and, oh. 

“Your goalie friend left his bottle,” Jonny observes absently. 

Patrick mourned his linemates when he left London; it was a shame he, Tits, and Gags would never take on the NHL together. It was a shame, but it was certainly livable. The idea that he’ll never get to play with Jonny is on another level. (Sure, Patrick hasn’t been drafted yet, but Buffalo has already clinched playoff berth; unless they trade up, they aren’t picking higher than 15th.)

“I don’t think Schultzy is gonna agree to play with me anymore. You lost me my goalie.”

“Sorry ‘bout that.” Jonny doesn’t look sorry. He doesn’t look happy either. By their sixth goal, they were barely celebrating anymore. Not because it was getting rote, but because it was becoming more eerie than exciting. Eerie and a little tragic. They would never play together. 

It was like Patrick said. It was terrible: it was amazing. 

“You’re gonna go number one,” Jonny comments, apropos of nothing.

Patrick casts his gaze away. His eyes land on one of the nets and he’s reminded in a rush of their seventh goal, shot in off Patrick’s impossible no-look assist through traffic. Is this what a bond feels like?

“Hope so,” Patrick says.

If this is what a bond feel like, _moves_ like, why wouldn’t you want one? A hope kindles in Patrick’s chest like a campfire: warm, well-fueled, and in need of a constant and cautious eye. Why has Jonny avoided one all this time? Is it really just stubborn self-sufficiency? And even so, would there be room for him to change his mind?

Jonny rolls his shoulders loose. “Draft lottery’s next week, right? Who’re you hoping for?”

Patrick doesn’t know what to say. There’s too much already on his mind and the question suddenly feels loaded, so he doesn’t say anything. The question flutters uselessly to their feet, unsatisfied.

“I’m beat,” Patrick says as he reaches for a pair of skate guards. “That was great.” They’re the only ones left. The game wrapped up half an hour ago, and they’re the last ones left.  
They lumber back to the locker room together. Jonny didn’t skate as hard as the others and played mostly no-contact, but his neck is still shiny with sweat. 

“That _was_ great.” Jonny’s grim little smile does nothing to bank the campfire. On the contrary, it makes Patrick a bit giddy. “Your backcheck’s gotten better.”

“Better?” Than what, Patrick almost asks. He tilts his head to run intrigued eyes over Jonny carefully, evaluating. “You’ve watched my games.”

“I had a lotta time on my hands on IR.” Jonny’s face is impassive, no trace of self-consciousness, but he lets the topic flutter to the floor.

Jonny is characteristically haphazard with his equipment as he begins to dismantle his gear in a well-worn pattern of efficient jerks and shrugs. Crossing to his stall with his skates still on, Patrick nearly twists his ankle stepping on one of Jonny’s little skin-colored earplugs, carelessly abandoned on the locker room floor. “Shit!” He just manages to catch himself and promptly picks the morsel of foam up to chuck it at Jonny’s head.

Jonny just squints in time to take his lumps and gives Patrick an unapologetic, lopsided grin. “Sorry.”

“This shit wouldn’t happen if you’d nut up and get a guide to bond with, ya big stubborn moron,” Patrick gripes good-naturedly. There isn’t any heat behind it even though Patrick still doesn’t understand that life choice. Maybe it’s like how Patrick feels about signing with an agent. Either way, he’s decided that Jonny’s an alright guy.

Jonny gives an off kilter laugh, “Hahhh, what?” When his head emerges from his practice jersey and it registers that Patrick isn’t joking, Jonny’s posture changes immediately. “Stubborn? What, like I’m avoiding one on purpose?”

“Um, yeah? Why else would you not have one?”

Jonny stops in the middle of disrobing and looks at Patrick like he’s preparing to explain that the world isn’t flat. “Because I _can’t._ ” The ‘you idiot’ is silently obvious. “I’ve got… well, they’ve been calling it a dysfunction. Bond dysfunction.”

For a long moment, the only noise in the room is the rattling air vents.

“Bond dys—I didn’t even know that was a thing. How does that work?” Patrick feels distraught, confused, and fucking stupid, in that order.

“Well, uh… It doesn’t,” Jonny says with some difficulty. “I don’t know. I went to specialists, I went to matchmaking services. I bought out Barnes & Noble’s entire sentinel section hoping to find anything that would help.”

Cue soap opera flashbacks to Mark B. Harrow’s _‘The Burden of Potential’_ in one of Jonny’s moving boxes; to _‘The Mind of a Sentinel: The Mind of a Winner’_ in Jonny’s hand. Cheesy rippling pond special effects slowly wrinkle the mental images and Patrick’s brain wrinkles with them.

“If I could have, I would’ve bonded in Bantam,” Jonny tells him. “Hell, I was trying then, too. It’s not a secret.”

Patrick can see it—little serious Jonny shaking hands with potential partners. He’s barely shed any of his practice gear, but Patrick has to take a seat on the bench to absorb this. “So you don’t…” They’re back to trailing off all the time. “... look down on guides?”

Jonny sinks down to join him.

“It’s flattering that you’ve mistaken me for such a high calibre jackass,” Jonny says, sarcasm thick as molasses. “Most people just accuse me of being boring. And even then, not to my face.” His black eyes slide to Patrick’s. “You’re a real pal.”

“What was I supposed to think?” Patrick bursts. “You’re not bonded, you don’t seem to be looking, and you’ve got that Mark douchebag’s book in your room!”

“It’s not a secret or anything.” Some thought makes Jonny snort at his knees while he pulls his laces loose and then pause, mentally sidetracked before he can tug his skates off. He leans his back against the stall and looks at the pockmarked ceiling in foggy reverie. “The idea that I would choose this. Fuck. I’ve done everything. I’ve tried everything. Even read ‘that Mark douchebag’s’ terrible book.” His eyes slip shut. He looked out of breath from the exercise before, but he’s suddenly tired-looking in a way that’s deeper than bone. “Or skimmed it, anyway.”

Patrick mirrors Jonny’s pose, sitting back against the cement block wall, still fully-clothed and reeling. 

“I did MRIs, I talked to a priest, I’m still getting set up with guides left and right. I bought four hundred and fifty dollars of bestselling sentinel books, sight fucking unseen, looking for anything I’m doing wrong or…” a tired sigh. “But I haven’t found an answer and I haven’t once met a guide I’m compatible with.”

And on top of all that misery, here Patrick was, judging him for choosing it voluntarily. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I was confused as hell. But you don’t seem like you’re down to talk about it. Any of it.” Patrick waves his hand in front of him in a vague squiggle to encompass anything in the realm of sentinel shit. “I guess I can kinda see why now.”

Jonny just nods, eyes still closed.

In summary, “Jonny, your life _sucks_.”

“Thank you.” The reply is delivered with solemn dignity. And then he’s back to work, removing his skates with the requisite force and grunts. Patrick’s not certain if the sentiment is wry or genuine. 

Patrick is much slower to escape his gear than Jonny, slogging through the mire of new information and murky guilt. And then beneath the murky guilt lurks a more viscous layer of selfish pain and disappointment. Jonny’s never met someone compatible. He’s met Patrick. The math is easy yet surprisingly difficult for him. He’d thought… well. Jonny is the only person Patrick has ever really tried to guide. Maybe it feels that way with everyone. Maybe it doesn’t feel that way at all on Jonny’s end. Which would make sense, really, considering how low Patrick’s guide potential tested when it finally registered at all. Patrick knows he guided Jonny in Sweden, though they never ever talked about it. But there’s a difference, clearly, between being able to guide someone and being able to bond with them, though Patrick couldn’t tell you what it is. He’s so ignorant when it comes to this stuff that it seems shocking now that he ever ventured to draw his own conclusions.

By the time Patrick hits the showers, Jonny is already out and tugging on street clothes.

Jonny is definitely firmly explicitly not supposed to be here, was definitely firmly explicitly instructed to stay off the ice while his team is on the road. This is a no-frills rink without much foot traffic, but since they’re in Buffalo, there’s a very real chance of Jonny being recognized. So just like he did on their way in, Jonny dons a pair of sunglasses (which are so outdated and ugly that they could only be some kind of prescription-strength sentinel shades) and a ballcap. 

In the parking lot, Patrick looks over his shoulder and fakes a gasp. “Paparazzi! Right behind you!”

Jonny twists violently, eyebrows raised over his hideous sunglasses.

Patrick tries to hide his snort of laughter in the elbow of his coat and continues on his way to the jeep. 

“... asshole,” Jonny mutters. 

“Someone thinks he’s important,” Patrick singsongs. He tucks his awkward pains away to be examined in private. They bicker companionably the whole way home.

*

One step forward and three steps back. That’s how it feels. One minute, Jonny is an infuriating guy with whom Patrick has upsettingly promising chemistry (hockey and otherwise). Then in one fell swoop, he proves himself to be a frighteningly decent guy for whom Patrick’s chemistry is useless. Patrick hadn’t thought about the difference between guiding and bonding before, but now that he does it seems obvious that they would require different things. Jonny’s been successfully guided by Patrick. He’s been successfully guided by professional guides, too, but that doesn’t mean Jonny would be able to bond with them. Patrick isn’t sure what the criteria are for bond compatibility, but he doesn’t fit them whatever they are. It shouldn’t feel any different. It certainly doesn’t change anything about Patrick’s future. That fact is more evident than ever with the draft lottery hanging over Patrick’s head, scant days away. The playoffs loom for Jonny, too. They both have their futures and those futures are decidedly plural.

Still, Patrick likes Jonny. He wants Jonny to do well, to reach his potential. From one floor below, he can feel Jonny’s anxiety about getting back on the ice, can hear the tossing and turning. Patrick can’t be the solution, and that’s a bitter pill, but he’s still a person, isn’t he? He can still be helpful. He tries to keep quiet in the basement, he stops fidgeting with his tennis ball, he doesn’t eat anything too fragrant in the house, and he turns the lights off whenever Jonny enters a room, opting for gentler daylight if it’s available. 

The first time Patrick hits the basement lights for Jonny, he swears Jonny goes a little pink as he heads for the rack of weights. Maybe the consideration is surprising to him or a bit much, but Patrick considers Jonny his friend now so Jonny will just have to deal with it. Besides, bit by bit it’s helping assuage the guilt of so thoroughly misjudging Jonny. 

Working out with Jonny is an unexpected boon. The kid knows what he’s doing and Patrick feels his advice paying off. On the ice with his skating coach, Patrick feels bigger, meaner. Still, the scale remains tucked under other equipment in the corner of the gym area in the basement. Patrick knows from experience that feeling bigger doesn’t always translate to a measurable gain. 

His paranoia proves well-founded when he meets with a nutritionist two months before the combine. He comes home in a huff.

“They’re saying I haven’t gotten any bigger.”

“What?” Jonny drops his free weights, looking, if possible, more upset than Patrick. “Of course you have.”

“So I _thought,_ ” Patrick gripes, dropping to one of the benches facing the wall. “Fuck’s sake.” 

“No, you have. See?”

In the mirror in front of them both, Patrick can see Jonny walk up behind him. Jonny dances long fingers over Patrick’s shoulders. “Right in here,” a line sweeps along the tops of Patrick’s deltoid muscles. Jonny’s voice is low and steady with focus as he conducts a visual inspection of Patrick’s musculature like Robocop. Patrick is probably building muscle as they speak just from the effort of fighting a shiver. “And here.” Patrick watches his own blank face in the mirror. Watches a fingertip trace across where his under armour is stretched a hair tighter across his biceps. “You’ve definitely gained here… I think you may’ve even gotten a little taller.”

“Now I know you’re just kissing up. What’s this about? What do you want?”

The eye contact in the mirror is startling. As dense a moment as it is, it breaks. Jonny says, “I’m serious. We aren’t talking inches, but you’ve definitely grown by Canadian standards.”

Centimeters are basically participation trophies, but Patrick doesn’t say so. He’s prayed for growth too often and too earnest to sniff at the speed with which it presents itself. 

“Either London padded your numbers at the beginning of the season or these guys have faulty equipment because you’ve only gotten better.” Jonny stands smiling at him in the mirror, head hovering just above Patrick’s. His hand is still resting on Patrick’s under armour. It’s warm. “I can sign a written note for you, if you’d like.”

“Ha,” Patrick says weakly.

Two minutes later, Patrick is cloistered under an unfeeling onslaught of freezing water. The cold shower isn’t helping. Probably because the physical contact was only the tip of the oh-shit iceberg. Jonny’s attention, his casual and thorough knowledge of Patrick’s body—

It’s the sentinel vision, Patrick reminds himself. Nothing weird about noticing your bro’s delts when you can count his pores at forty paces. Patrick huffs a sigh past blueing lips. Life was so much easier when Jonathan Toews was a two-faced bigot Patrick couldn’t stand, when Patrick wasn’t a guide. Not that he’s a guide now, except maybe he is, not that it’s much help to his efforts to make amends to Jonny after all those misconceptions, since whoops they aren’t compatible that way which doesn’t make a big difference, of course, only Patrick thought that they might be and, well, if they were, maybe they could—

Four minutes of cold water and Patrick’s dick still isn’t with the program. Being eighteen is hard. It’s hard and no one understands. Patrick deems it a new low when he has to turn the water body temp and resort to reading the back of his shower gel bottle. 

_“Sodium laureth sulfate, cocamidopropyl betaine, fragrance, glycol distearate, cocamide MEA…”_

Dis-tia-rate or dis-tee-rate, Patrick wonders. More noteworthy than the dodecasyllabic chemicals Patrick slathers on his body daily is the contrast between them and the simplicity of Jonny’s toiletries. His bottles sit one shelf up on the caddy, like they think they’re better than Patrick’s. ( _Possibly_ Patrick is projecting.) Minimalism marks the design and the ingredients lists. They don’t even smell like anything. Patrick ought to switch to shit like this so the bathroom won’t be a fragrance bomb every time Jonny opens the door. Testing Jonny’s body wash for himself, Patrick gets sidetracked wondering how Jonny manages to smell so good when nothing he uses is scented. This line of investigation is the wrong one and Patrick is forced to turn the shower cold again. He can’t jerk off when the object of his fantasies is just down the hall, ears wide open.

Patrick returns to reading the ingredients list of his own soap and counting his breaths. Distractions can only do so much in the face of hunger, but Patrick has learned that these days, even jerking off itself ends up feeling like a temporary distraction from a stronger need. He’s breathing to distract himself from jerking off; he’s been jerking off to distract himself from, well, actually thinking. _Sodium salicylate, sodium benzoate, citric acid…_ He tugs feverishly at the reins of his racing hormones, trying to slow them down. _Tetrasodium EDTA, sodium chloride, poloxamer 124…_

Digging his thumbnail into his thigh, he keeps his eyes glued on the label and forces himself to read it syllable by syllable. _Pol, ee, qua, tern, ee, um, se, ven…_ As his breathing slows, he tweaks the water to body temperature. Now he reads letter by letter, slower and slower until all he’s doing is breathing and drifting in his own clear mind. 

He’s dimly aware when he steps out that he has no idea how long he spent in there. No chance of him using up the hot water, in any event. His phone tells him it’s 7 PM, the primetime of school nights. That’s the time the girls go in and out and the nightly news plays and his mom bangs around the kitchen to summon various delicious smells out of thin air. 

But in the living room, amidst all the activity, Patrick happens upon something he’s never seen before. 

“Shh,” Jackie bosses him from her seat at the breakfast counter that’s covered in her homework.

Jonathan Toews is dead asleep on the couch. 

Sitting in the upright pose of a man who had no intention of napping, Jonny has his head tipped all the way back on the tops of the couch cushions. He might even be snoring, unless Patrick is mistaken.

Jackie confides in a whisper, “Mom says he found a off switch.”

When Patrick was a boy, grinding his teeth watching scouts skate their eyes right over him, he decided he didn’t need to make them look and he didn’t need to make them regret, but they would all the same. And he’d do it on his own. Patrick is still sticking to his guns and ignoring the Johnny-come-latelies knocking on his door. His chief aim isn’t to make them all rue the day they’d misjudged Patrick Kane. But he’ll enjoy it when they do. That’s what he tells himself. So that’s the side of things he’s used to being on. It’s a new experience to be the one doing the misjudging and regretting and ruing the day. 

Patrick is used to being the one who’s underestimated, so his lingering remorse over misjudging Jonny again and again _and again_ is unfamiliar to him. It doesn’t sit right. Jonny’s not even doing it on purpose, but whenever Patrick catches sight of him he eats a little more crow. 

Every time he’s close to letting himself off (just because Jonny’s great doesn’t mean he isn’t still kind of the worst), Patrick comes across something that makes his guilt double. He’ll notice that Jonny’s already changed the sheets in their room (—uh, not ‘their room’ like _‘their room,’_ just, you know), or he’ll see Jonny leaving the house in his game day suit to watch the Sabres play from the box, or Patrick will walk in on something like Jonny being bossed into a two-person massage train with Jackie on the living room floor. Jonny is the caboose because he’s a big pushover. (Considering how much he indulges Jackie, Jonny’s just lucky his hair is so short. It would be braided six ways to Sunday otherwise.) He’s sitting criss-cross applesauce and carefully chopping her tiny back with hands in blades bigger than Jackie’s head. The motion is so soft that Jackie can probably barely feel it, but she preens under the attention anyway. Patrick is no stranger to Jackie’s massage trains—they are one-way tracks. 

“Hey, sign me up,” Patrick says to mess with her. He plops down in front of her, effectively dethroning her as conductor of the train. When no massaging happens, he prompts her, “Choo choo! Rules are rules.”

Jackie huffs a pouty little sigh and sets about hitting Patrick’s back with useless little chops. Not being the locomotive quickly grows on her, though, when she realizes she can take the opportunity to play with his hair. It’s clear she doesn’t have the slightest intention of prettifying it, if her delighted evil giggles are any indication. Patrick will let it slide; it’s not like he’s got anywhere to be after this.

She must achieve the optimal clusterfuck of curls, because she eventually gives the pursuit up and switches to idle back scratches.

“A little higher,” Patrick demands imperiously. Jacke hmphs and complies. “A little harder.” She digs her chipped-glitter nails in. “No, your other left.”

“You never _said_ left!”

He abandons the verbal taunting and leans back bit by bit, going limp until he’s nearly squashing her.

“Hey!” she cries, both palms flat on his shoulders to hold his weight up. “Patty!”

“What?” Patrick says innocently. Her protests are muffled. He leans back further as if to hear her better. “What was that? I can’t hear you!”

He’s tilted back so far that when he tips his head back, he can see Jonny blinking down at him. There’s a moment where Patrick forgets where he is, but it’s broken by Jackie screeching “Switch! I said swiiitch!” and pinching Patrick’s back.

“Ow! But I’m the conductor.” Patrick parrots Jackie’s favorite excuse word for word, a taste of her own medicine: “I’m the best at being the conductor so I get to be the conductor.”

The heels of Jackie’s palms dig into Patrick’s back obstinately as she parrots him right back. “Rules are rules!”

Patrick grins. “Ya got me there.”

“Go be the caboose!” She’s pushing him forward with her feet now, and Patrick finally relents, rolling over and up onto his knees.

“Yeah, go be the caboose, _Patty_ ,” Jonny teases in that dumb tone he uses for chirping. 

Patrick rolls his eyes, but knee walks to the back of the line. He has to follow his own rules to set a good example for Jackie. (He’s thought more than once that if she ends up a juvenile delinquent it will be a direct result of all the times he’s cheated at Candyland over the years.)

For all his teasing, Jonny doesn’t seem to be aware of what he was asking for. Patrick scoots up behind him, resigned to five minutes of servitude before he can slip away to go for his run. Maybe between any two random dudes, this would be weird. But they’re both pro (okay, pro and semi-pro) hockey players. Patrick helps teammates stretch all the time. He was basically Gags’ hamstring bitch all season. This is no different. As athletes, they’re both accustomed to being handled this way and that, not to mention being tackled and hacked at in every way imaginable.

He starts in on Jonny’s shoulders, just light pressure since this was mostly farce anyway, idly wondering whether he should invite Jonny on his run and what his mom is making for dinner. His inner monologue is sidetracked when Patrick notices that Jonny’s getting tenser and tenser instead of loose. He doesn’t have a back injury, does he?

“Too hard?”

“Umyeah,” says Jonny.

“Well then,” Patrick says. He switches to drumming on Jonny’s back with hummingbird thumps so light that if Jonny’s back were water, Patrick wouldn’t break the surface. Patrick thinks he is executing some prime physical comedy, so he’s peeved when doesn’t get so much as a laugh from Jonny. He’s a joyless monolith planted before Patrick’s folded legs. 

Patrick lets his mind wander a bit, trying not to push too hard, basically just absently petting Jonny’s back at this point. 

“Tay-zer!” Jackie says. “Why’d you stop?”

Jonny mutters something apologetic and his arms return to life. 

The configuration of their little train is totally backwards—Patrick is the one who could actually use a decent massage right now. The stress of training like crazy for the combine, not to mention the stress of tomorrow night’s little draft lottery watch party looming over his head, has him wound up like a toy soldier. 

Grumbling, Patrick changes tack again to spell rude words on Jonny’s back until he gets some kind of reaction out of him. His index finger starts in on a capital D, pushing the thin material of Jonny’s shirt around with it. Jonny’s shirt is loose in the back and thin material gathers under the pad of Patrick’s finger as he draws. D-I is as far as Patrick gets. 

A full-body shiver shakes through Jonny, though Patrick can tell from his taut shoulders and clenched fists that he was trying to fight it. Patrick pulls his hand away, abruptly feeling weird, himself, all squirmy like some ticklish version of arousal. _Wow,_ inappropriate. 

He scoots back and rises to his feet all at once. “Alright, ladies, this has been nice, but I’m off on a run. Should be back by five.”

*

The house is crammed with family and friends and french onion dip. Patrick is beginning to think he would have skipped this party if it weren’t, like, about him. Sure, the 2007 NHL Draft Lottery drawing is a big deal. Sure, it totally warrants a watch party. But Patrick would be happy to go anywhere in the league, as long as he goes first. However, most of the people crowded into the house are not Patrick and their restless anxiety is catching.

It kinda feels like this event is for everyone but him. At least in the beginning Patrick had Jonny to entertain him, if only with the spectacle of Jonny’s sour mood steadily creeping further downhill. Patrick doesn’t even have that now, since Jonny fucked off somewhere outside after Toronto was awarded the thirteenth pick. (When Patrick asked him where he was going, Jonny ignored it and said, “Your mom must be disappointed.” “Why?” “Toronto was the last destination that would’ve had you in driving distance.” And then he was gone.)

Knowing Jonny, he’s either on one of his long runs (potentially halfway to Toronto himself by now) or mowing the damn lawn. Either way, Patrick is left behind. He’s certainly grateful when his dad steals him away from the clutches of his Uncle John to sneak him a beer in the kitchen. 

Patrick has a huddle of childhood buddies here that he could’ve escaped to instead of his dad, but they’re all hanging out by the flatscreen where the TV personalities debate the merits of top-ranked prospects. Where the co-hosts bandy soundbites about Patrick Kane’s excellent showing at the WJC but also his lackluster playoffs performance for the heavily favored London Knights and his size and his room for defensive improvement and… And Patrick’s happy to have a reason to be in the kitchen.

“Three to go, Buzz,” his dad says. They pass the bottle between them, sharing a silence along with it. Locker rooms go eerie quiet sometimes during intermissions of important games; that’s how the kitchen feels. Commercials can be heard blaring from the flatscreen in the living room. With picks fourteen through four unveiled, they now have to wait through this lengthy TSN special on the draft lottery process and this year’s draft class before finding out the top three.

Patrick nods wordlessly while his dad looks over the legal pad he’s keeping notes on. Eleven of the fourteen teams are crossed out in blunted sharpie. They certainly aren’t ranked by driving distance from Buffalo. Beside some of them are phone numbers, likely colleagues his dad has in those organizations, also crossed out. Little dots sit to the left of a few teams. Florida, Phoenix, Washington, Colorado. Patrick’s brow wrinkles but after a moment he realizes those are teams that Patrick hasn’t had much contact with, ones that are more interested in drafting for their blue line. Phoenix is the exception among them, but pending the combine, Phoenix is sold on Turris. These are the teams that Patrick’s dad doesn’t expect him to be picked by.

Patrick has done his best to not pay attention to the changing ISS and NHL Central Scouting rankings, trusting his dad to alert him to anything important. Phoenix, with an eighteen-point-eight percent shot at first overall, is the only team with a dot next to it that remains in contention for a top three pick. The numbers fail to scare Patrick. If Phoenix snags first, Patrick will just have to roll up his sleeves and make it happen. The dots don’t scare Patrick either. He’s going first.

“One Eastern Conference, two Western,” his dad muses. 

It’s no surprise that Philadelphia is still in contention. Dead last in the league, they boast the highest odds for picking first: twenty-five percent. Patrick didn’t exactly grow up rooting for the Flyers, but if they pick first overall, he’ll be more than happy to wear an orange sweater. Chicago, on the other hand, is the Charlie Bucket of the draft lottery; they’re just lucky to be in the running for third. Eight-point-one percent chance of getting first overall.

Patrick waits for his dad to look up from the chart and give Patrick a fortifying thump on the back or some platitudes about the strengths and upsides of the three remaining teams. What comes instead is, “Son, I think it’s time to get serious about signing with an agent.”

And then as if by magic Patrick is outside because he’d rather mow the lawn than stick around for that hornet's nest of a conversation. He hears Jonny moving around in the backyard somewhere near the vicinity of the wood pile. If he’s out there chopping wood with his shirt half-open like some Jane Austen-type regency hero, Patrick will never recover. (What? Patrick had to take English just like everyone else. Back off.) 

The fresh air is a relief. Inside is the family and recognition and familiarity Patrick craved all fall and winter long. Yet, now that it’s all here for him, Patrick just wants to be outside. With the guy he wanted kicked out all fall and winter long.

“Whatcha doin’?” Patrick asks, though Jonny is obviously loading firewood into the Kanes’ little wheelbarrow with the intention of moving it to restock the smaller woodstack on the patio.

“We were running low,” is all Jonny says. His voice is rough, though there’s hardly enough wood back there to wind him.

They were running low because it’s April. The time for building fires has passed. Patrick decides not to voice this. “Want help?”

Jonny doesn’t look up, but his movements pause. “Sure.”

Jonny doesn’t ask for an update on the lottery, either because he can hear the results from outside or because he doesn’t particularly care. As Jonny doesn’t seem to be in a chatty mood, Patrick works quietly, picking up surplus logs at random and tossing them into the newly vacant space in the covered woodpile so they can dry out. Two minutes later, there’s none left for him, so he goes around the backyard with a bag to collect kindling. It’s an absolutely useless chore this time of year, but it beats going back inside. Philadelphia Phoenix Chicago Philadelphia Phoenix Chicago.

He’s using his foot to break up a fallen limb with a viciously satisfying _crack!_ when he hears Jonny swear from the other side of the yard, out of sight. Patrick hefts up his full bag of kindling to investigate.

Jonny presses his mouth to the heel of his left hand, then pulls it away without any satisfaction. It’s both hilarious and frustratingly endearing, the way Jonny stares his own hand down with such vengeance and antagonism, eyes black and shiny as camera lenses.

“Splinter?” Patrick gamely sidles up and abandons his bag of twigs on the lawn.

Jonny’s hand is warm when Patrick snatches it up from the from the grip of Jonny’s other hand. Smooth, too. Is this the first time they’ve ever touched skin to skin? It can’t be. But it can’t be otherwise. Patrick would have remembered the crackle. 

Jonny’s eyes go wild. “What are you—let go!”

“It’s just a little splinter, I’ll get it for you. Just, like, look with your super vision and show me where it is.” 

Patrick uses his thumbs to spread Jonny’s palm out flat. Jonny squirms in his hold awkwardly, trying to pull his arm back, as if Patrick would let him pussy out like that. 

“Nuh uh, none of that. Just show me where it is.” Patrick lightly taps the back of Jonny’s hand with a fingertip for emphasis like he’s gesturing at a map. “Use those microscope eyes.”

“I don’t _have_ microscope eyes,” Jonny bites out, getting his hand free with a desperate jerk. He cradles the hand against his chest like he narrowly avoided Patrick chopping it off.

“You what?”

But Jonny is already walking away, retreating to the garage. His breathing is audibly unsteady and, belatedly, Patrick’s is too. What the hell did he do wrong?

Half a minute goes by and Patrick is still by the woodpile, befuddled, with one hand poised to yank a splinter out. In the absence of any of those, he attempts to pluck blond arm hairs at random. His skin prickles and he pretends it’s from the tweezing. 

Jonny… doesn’t have microscope eyes. But of course he does. Everyone knows Jonathan Toews is Tier Three: scent, hearing, and vision… Right? 

Patrick’s brain spins unpleasantly as he moves the loaded wheelbarrow towards the smaller woodstack on the patio, finishing the chore Jonny abandoned. He doesn’t have microscope eyes. Maybe he’s the sentinel version of farsighted? That’s probably a thing. Twenty-five percent likely, Patrick judges reasonably. Maybe Jonny’s only Tier Two and the media is misinformed? Eighteen-point-eight percent likelihood. The list goes on. Maybe he’s Tier Three without vision, but Patrick gives that theory an eight-point-one percent chance.

*

Hours later, the dust and the odds are both settled.

The quiet in the house feels strange. Dirty cups are piled up by the sink and the living room is rumpled, but those are the only indicators anyone was here. It’s dark. Only the counter lights in the kitchen remain, illuminating the dishes piled up by the sink. It’s so late that even the dishwasher is done for the night. 

Maybe that’s why the knock feels unreasonably loud.

“Jonny?” Patrick is whispering, but he knows Jonny’s awake in there because of the sliver of light shining out from under the door.

A moment passes where Patrick shifts from foot to foot thinking maybe Jonny is wearing his noise-cancellers, and then, “Hang on, let me get a shirt on.” There might be legitimate reason, Patrick realizes, for Jonny’s shirt allergy, if he’s got heightened touch like Patrick now suspects. After some rustling, Jonny says, “Yeah, come in.”

The door is already unlocked and Patrick slips inside.

He’s never actually seen Jonny in his bed before; it’s an unanticipated marvel. With his long body folded, sitting up at the head of the bed, he fits perfectly, but there was no way Jonny could lay flat on the bed without his feet hanging over the footboard, possibly all the way up to calf territory. It’s first and foremost hilarious, but also sets Patrick off-kilter in a totally unexpected way. Jonny in his room is the mental image that made Patrick grind his teeth all fall, but seeing the reality makes something swoop in his chest. Something not necessarily good, not necessarily bad, but certainly something swoopy.

Jonny’s noise cancellers are slung around his neck, big as a pilot’s headset, and his hastily acquired shirt is bunched up around his ribs. He’s propped up beside some book about meditation on Patrick’s baby blue sheets. It gets bookmarked and set aside. Jonny straightens his shirt to cover up the vulnerable strip of skin, then looks at Patrick expectantly.

Right, Patrick came in here to say something.

“Uh. I wanted to apologize. About earlier. I didn’t mean to—”

“I know you didn’t. It’s okay.”

“Are you? ...Okay, I mean.”

“I’m fine, I was just caught off guard.” Patrick has about five hundred other questions, but Jonny briskly changes the subject, “So. Chicago, eh.”

“Chicago.”

Patrick did come to apologize, but he was also hoping for the opportunity to get some answers, to get everything straight between them so he could stop constantly stepping in it with Jonny. They’re friends, at least from where Patrick is standing. But Jonny isn’t standing where Patrick is standing. He’s sitting on Patrick’s bed and he’s not volunteering anything. Not so much as a facial expression. He’s a brick wall no matter how many shots Patrick takes at him. So maybe Jonny’s indifferent about him. Why does that sting so much?

“Well, I’ll let you sleep then.”

“Wait,” Jonny says. Patrick’s hand pauses on the door handle. He looks over his shoulder. “There’s a um. There’s a team thing tomorrow night. Sort of a send-off for the regular season before we buckle down.”

“Uh huh?” Patrick prompts when it seems like Jonny finds the reason for this announcement self-evident. 

“You should come,” Jonny elaborates like his meaning was obvious.

“You want me to?”

“Obviously.” The word is contradicted by Jonny’s brickwall face, impenetrable as ever.

“Okay, then.”

Jonny smiles and Patrick tucks it under his pillow to help him sleep through the night.

It would be bad luck for the Sabres to celebrate winning the President’s Trophy, so, officially-speaking, tonight is to commemorate the end of the regular season and making the playoffs. The bar the team picked is a new one and Patrick knows nothing about it. He’s surprised to find that it has more of a poolhall than a club vibe. No flashing lights or deafening music, plenty of other amusements if you weren’t into booze or dancing. When Jonny and Patrick step in the door, Briere looks so pleased to see Jonny that Patrick instantly knows he picked the bar with Jonny in mind. 

The first questions Patrick has to field from the team are, “Kane Jr! How’d you get Tazer to come out?” and, “What are you doing here, buddy? Last time I saw you musta been bring your kid to work day. You were this tall—” and, “What can I get you to drink?”

It’s a godsend that they aren’t carding anybody with the team; Patrick needs a drink. He’s trapped between a rock and an awkward place: NHLers he’s still a little in awe of and Jonny who’s still being a little weird around Patrick. 

The next round of questions includes, “Refill?,” “How high are you going in the draft, kid? ‘Cause we need a guy with these pool skills on the team. I’ll put a word in with Reggie,” and, “Could you stop making that face?”

That last one is of course from Jonny who of course has just been obliterated in pool and who of course is being a truly awful sport about it.

“What face?”

“That gloaty face. Quit it.”

Patrick sighs tragically like being a winner is the greatest burden in his life. “This is just my face, Jonny.” He adds, “When I’m gloating, you’ll know it,” because it’s the truth.

Jonny scoffs a dismissive noise and continues making a face like he’s chewing his cheek. When Patrick catches sight of his own face in a mirror-backed Budweiser advertisement hung on the wall, the fond smile on it startles him into realizing that Jonny’s pissiness, his undisputed title as world’s sorest loser, delights Patrick. He kind of loves it.

“C’mon, sunshine, let’s get a drink.” Patrick magnanimously ignores the sour face and herds Jonny to the bar. To his surprise, Patrick only has to suggest it once for Jonny to decide he’s drinking tonight.

Drinking makes talking a lot easier. It only takes two drinks for Patrick to power past the awkwardness of real dude emotions and say what he’s been wanting to say.

“Hey man, I’m sorry again about the whole splinter thing.” It’s been on his mind a lot. Patrick nearly apologizes for ‘the whole massage thing’ too (which makes total sense in retrospect), but Jonny has teammates all around them and that might… well, that might sound weird to someone droppin’ eaves. 

“It’s okay.”

“Yeah?”

Jonny’s face goes funny. “Well, you thought I was a sentinel supremacist with heightened vision who was endangering his life by voluntarily playing unbonded,” Jonny lets the summary hang in the air before finishing, “so I’m really more worried about your powers of deduction than myself.”

“This kinda shit is just beyond me,” Patrick admits, hanging his head. “Wanna hear something funny? I was living with my host family in London for three whole months before I realized my host parents were bonded.”

“It took you three months to sense it?”

“No!” Patrick grins into his beer; say what you want about Patrick but he knows how to laugh at himself. “I never picked up on it. Their seven year-old clued me in.”

Jonny whistles. His eyes linger on Patrick like this information is explaining a lot. 

“This is what I’m talking about when I say I’m hopeless with this stuff. I registered so late I missed most of the classes and my guide junk is so weak that I never picked any of it up on my own. I mean for all I know, you’ve got a fourth sense kicking around in there! I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“I only have three,” Jonny promises.

“I don’t knooow,” Patrick sings dubiously. “You’re pretty slippery. Maybe you’ve got one of those weird ones. Like you can predict the first frost every year.” It was possible. There were loads of miscellaneous sensitivities out there. You have conventional sentinels with incredible hearing or super sight, and then you’ve got someone like Patrick’s great aunt who could reportedly identify every ingredient in a pastry you gave her. Just pastries, though. That’s how it goes.

“I’m a groundhog now?”

“Or you can… fuckin’, uh, smell tumors like one of those bees.” 

“I can’t smell tumors, Patrick.”

“I don’t knooow,” Patrick repeats. “Have you ever tried?”

Jonny plants an emphatic elbow onto the table with his wallet in hand, making a show of being driven to this. He pulls his weird little Manitoban drivers license out and points at the tiny icons crowded under his organ donor status. On the end, a little hand symbol demarcates heightened touch. At this point, Patrick is relieved to see the three simple icons, ear-nose-hand, laid out in black and white. He’s even more relieved there isn’t a fourth one (especially not the little star that covers any miscellaneous sensitivities), because at this rate he wouldn’t be able to muster up proper shock should Jonny have the magical ability to just straight up hear Patrick’s thoughts. 

“Noted,” Patrick says so that Jonny can tuck the ID back into his wallet. “I thought you had heightened vision. _Everyone_ thinks you have heightened vision,” he revises.

Jonny doesn’t look at him. “That’s their business. I’m not required to disclose any of that stuff. The public can think whatever they want. And frankly I’m better off if the opposing team has faulty information.”

That last bit actually makes a bit of sense, Patrick will allow. Touch is probably objectively the shittiest sentinel sense to have if you play in the NHL. Marian Hossa is the only active player Patrick can think of who has it and Hossa’s only Tier One. It’s a hard thing to judge, but you’d have to be pretty naive to think that players never targeted that kind of vulnerability. And it was the easiest thing in the world to make it look like an accident.

Patrick picks at the label on his beer bottle. “Yeah but like, even your teammates?”

“How do you know how much my teammates know?”

Patrick looks away, thinking of David Jarram and Gatorade powder and the staying power of little misunderstandings. “We were teammates, way back,” he says instead.

Patrick has been wrong about a robust number of things in his life, but he really outdid himself when it came to Jonathan Toews.

“We were thirteen. My third sense hadn’t even developed yet,” Jonny points out. “My teammates here know. It’s not a secret. I just… I don’t… like talking about it.” Each word is pulled like a tooth. “I have to, with management, obviously, and the medical team and in general with the media. But outside of that, I just wanna be a hockey player. Y’know?”

“I get that.” Every interview Patrick gives ends up being about his size; he can totally empathize. They have more in common that Patrick ever would have imagined in the fall. “But it’s made getting to know you kind of hard. Plus all the misinformation stuff.”

“Who’s been saying I’m against bonding?”

“Nobody said. I just assumed.”

“Yeah well, you know what they say about assumptions.”

“That they’re a great social tool for making tons of friends and never being wrong?” Patrick tries.

“ _You’re_ a social tool.”

“No _you_ are.”

“Good one.” Jonny shouldn’t be handling his alcohol with such composure. He hasn’t put in the hours Patrick has. 

“Bluhh. I usually hold my liquor better. I’m not normally like this.” 

“Yes you are.”

“Pfff,” Patrick presses a derisive pointer finger to Jonny’s forehead and pushes just hard enough that his head rocks back. “Like you’d know.”

Jonny just rolls his eyes. “Well back in November, you drunk dialled your whole family and rambled at me for half an hour about tits and the weather. So I think I _would_ know.”

“I did what now?”

Jonny seems equal parts offended and entertained that Patrick doesn’t remember that night. His eyes glint as he recounts the tale. The river of time and vodka runs too wide between Patrick and the memory for them to reunite, but he feels fairly confident he never gushed about Jonny being Patrick’s hockey idol or about Jonny’s mom’s boobs. Well. Patrick’s confident about the first one.

Instead of arguing over it, Patrick just rolls his eyes and strongarms Jonny into getting their next round. Unsurprisingly (on account of his face and his build and his everything), it doesn’t take thirty seconds at the bar for Jonny to be approached by a brunette with eyelashes Patrick can see all the way from here.

“Hey, little Kane, did that girl start chatting Tazer up or the other way around?” Campbell slings himself to sit across from Patrick in the booth.

Patrick lets the moniker roll off his back and says, “First one.” Jonny’s been chatting with her, leaning with one elbow on the bar, for at least ten minutes now. Maybe Patrick should go get his own drink.

Campbell makes a distinctly Canadian unhappy sound, shaking his head. “She blew me off like five minutes ago.”

Patrick shrugs a what-can-you-do?

“Twenty-seven and I’m getting edged out by the youths,” Campbell sighs. He nudges his beer bottle against Patrick’s on the table. “Hell, you’ll probably be out-earning me in three years. When you turn, what? Fifteen?” There’s no malice in his griping, just a comfy well-worn self-deprecation. Campbell turns out to be an easy guy to be around, and Patrick is glad of the company.

“Child labor laws must be different in Canada,” Patrick grins, like he didn’t spend half his childhood north of the border. 

“Doesn’t sound like you’ll be in Canada. I have it on good authority you’ve got a first class ticket to Chicago.”

“Well, my dad is gonna be a bit biased.”

“Chicago’s a great city, y’know.” Campbell takes a pull from his beer. “Where would you wanna go if you could go anywhere?”

“Where would you wanna be if you were me?” Patrick asks with honest curiosity. He never knows how to answer the question, though he’s asked all the time by everyone from journalists to Jonny. Patrick doesn’t have the luxury of picking, so what does his preference matter? All he wants is to be picked first.

Campbell mulls this over, glancing around the loose, happy groups populating the bar. “I guess I don’t know either. I like where I am. Buffalo’s a good place to be right now…” Campbell expounds on his reasoning, some of it to do with the team, some of it to do with real estate prices and income tax and stuff that doesn’t concern Patrick just yet. Besides, Patrick’s attention is monopolized when he notices Jonny returning from the bar, broad shoulders slicing through the crowd like water. Patrick decides Campbell’s answer isn’t a bad one.

After twisting to see what Patrick is looking at, Campbell needles at Jonny in that good-natured way of his. “Did ya strike out, there, Tazer?”

Jonny gives a unbothered shrug as he approaches the booth. 

“Look at that boy band face,” Campbell complains to Patrick, gesturing at Jonny’s impassive expression. What kinda messed up boy band member would he be, Patrick muses hysterically. Responsibility Spice? “How’m I supposed to compete with that?”

Jonny smirks quietly and drops a fresh beer in front of Patrick, waiting for him to scoot out so Jonny can reclaim his seat where his back is against the wall—classic sentinel move. Resituated in the booth, there’s a moment where Jonny says nothing and Patrick can feel him listening for something. The girl with the eyelashes is chatting with her friend at the bar. At length, Jonny mentally rejoins the table. “You should try again, Soupy. She’d go for it, I think.”

Campbell leans forward on the table like Jonny is reeling him in. “Are you using your superpowers? Did she say she likes me? What are my odds here, buddy?”

Jonny chuckles. Not for the first time, Patrick struggles to remember that Jonny is only eighteen. Campbell hangs on his every word. “Just don’t try to talk about _The Bachelor_ again.”

“But chicks _like_ —”

“Don’t.”

“Done,” Campbell promises him and he’s already gone, red curls disappearing in the crowd en route to the bar.

“You getting him back for a prank or something?”

“Hm?” Jonny blinks to refocus. “Nah, I like Soupy. I think he’ll make it happen.”

Patrick scrubs a hand through his hair hoping it’s not as much of a mess as he suspects. “So you didn’t strike out. She did, right?” It’s a guess, but Patrick’s pretty confident about it.

“Wasn’t feeling it.”

“You feel everything,” Patrick retorts, making a dumb face. Actually, “Wait, or is that the problem?” he asks on impulse. He’s just. He’s so fucking curious. 

“Is what the problem?”

“Y’know. You feel _everything._ It’s… too much?”

Jonny just shrugs, still a bit squirrelly.

“Wait so are you a virgin?” His words come out all at once.

Jonny’s head snaps up. “What?” Throwing a straw wrapper at Patrick’s head, Jonny grumbles, “I get—I’ve gotten action, douchebag. You just have to be cautious.”

His use of the word ‘you’ unfairly startles Patrick’s heart rate. “I’ll bet.”

Patrick looks away, cursing his one-track mind and trying to regather himself. Don’t be creepy, he tells himself, just talk to him like you’d talk to Gags. “So how’re the guide dates going?”

Jonny makes an ambivalent noise. “It never comes to anything. I mean, they aren’t necessarily a romantic thing, but those blind date setups are always awkward. My mom will only let me beg off so many, though.” He takes an especially deep pull from his beer. “Got some coming up just to get her off my back.”

“How do they go? You get coffee, hold hands, try to merge souls?”

Jonny puts his head in his hand with a chuckle. “You are the worst guide—sorry, not-guide—of all time. But sure, Kaner. That’s the broad strokes.”

“You really hold hands?” Patrick’s eyes light up with delight.

In lieu of dignifying Patrick’s question with a response, Jonny just does that brief almost-eye-roll he loves so much. “What about you?” Jonny deflects. “MacLean proposed yet?”

Patrick snorts into his beer. It’s the first time they’re really talking about it, but it feels like fair game since Patrick brought up Jonny’s potential virginity not two minutes ago. “I don’t know how you got his number so quick, dude, but I’m indebted to you for life for getting me out of that. You don’t even know.”

“Repressed homosexuality has a smell,” Jonny smirks and Patrick goes very still. 

There’s a tight moment in which Patrick can only make eye contact with Sam Adams on the bottle in his hand. If Jonny can smell repressed attraction… 

“That’s a joke,” Jonny says. 

“I know that!” Patrick lies, red. To cover, he adds, “I get bits and pieces of that stuff from you. I think I would’ve noticed suddenly getting gaydar.”

“Stuff?” Jonny echoes. “You mean senses? Sensory input? You can feel that?”

“Only a little.”

Jonny only hmms with mild interest. Patrick gets the impression that the alcohol is finally hitting him. “Being a guide must be weird.”

“A guide- _adept_ ,” Patrick corrects with a joking grin, harkening back to that petty fight they had in the driveway all the way back in December. 

Right away, Jonny is nodding though he isn’t smiling back. “Right, not a guide. Well, either way, it must be nice to have good hearing every once in a while.”

“Makes you say that?”

“Your sisters say you’re obsessed with Eminem. Really?”

“Don’t diss Slim! I’m allowed to have diverse tastes.”

“And to dress up like him?”

“That was one—how the fuck do you know about that?”

Jonny just smirks knowingly into his beer.

“Jesus.” Patrick scrubs a hand over his face. “What else did they tell you?”

“Not much. Other than you playing house with them and dolls with them and walking out of _The Ring_ because you got too scared and doing dance competitions.” Jonny’s giving Patrick shit but his face is undeniably fond. It makes Patrick’s own face heat. Clearly the guy needs chirping practice; you’re not supposed to look at your victim like he’s a baby duck.

 _Winning_ dance competitions, Patrick wants to correct him, but wisely refrains. Instead, he snaps, “Oh, like you have room to talk. I was like twelve with the dolls, and Jackie has you whipped to this _day_.” 

Their bickering peters out eventually when Patrick zones out, idly watching Jonny’s teammates play pool. He’s mentally reviewing their conversation, trying to make all the new information click in his pleasantly muzzy brain.

“You’re looking at me so weird right now.”

Patrick rubs his face, hand damp and chilled from his beer bottle. “I’ve just—I’ve still got questions, dude.”

“Like?”

“So many.”

“...such as?” Jonny raises a cool brow.

“Such as… what the fuck?”

“What the fuck what?”

“What the fuck, how’d you do stuff like spotting me in the crowd at World Juniors? If you don’t have vision. What the fuck, what about those ugly prescription sunglasses—” 

“Hey!” 

Patrick barrels on, “—What the fuck, why do you have to sit in the dark for fugues? What the fuck, is this why you never wear any fucking clothes? What the fuck... what the fuck?” He needs a minute to formulate more questions, but trust him, he has plenty.

“... I thought those sunglasses looked okay.”

“Wow.”

“And I don’t need dark during my fugues. I just don’t like wasting electricity. You’re the one that kept hitting the lights for me. I dunno, I thought it was thoughtful, even if you were misinformed. I didn’t wanna be a dick.”

“I wouldn’t’ve thought you were a dick for correcting me.”

Jonny lulls his head to slide Patrick slightly boozy skeptical look. He sighs, then tips back to study the ceiling. “I feel like just about everything I’ve done since the beginning of the season has made you think I’m a dick.” The words have a casual rawness to them, like it’s a confession hiding in the clothing of an idle observation.

There’s no obvious response to that, so Patrick takes a long sip of his drink and jokes, “If you wanted me to like you, you shouldn’t have gone around making cinnamon rolls and babysitting and rescuing me from douchey teammates and doing nothing wrong. You monster.” There’s a lot of guilt there still, but it’s not like Patrick had the benefit of Jonny’s baby siblings around to vouch for him via embarrassing, endearing childhood stories. 

Jonny scrapes together a smile. “Sorry, from here on out I’ll just nag you to clean your room and bounce randomly between ignoring you and butting into your business completely uninvited.”

Patrick nods approvingly. That sounds like decent behavior to him. “Then I’ll like you,” he confirms.

Jonny just laughs, making a little “tch” sound. When his eyes meet Patrick’s, they’re shy, at odds with his stature and the demeanor he projects. Something squeezes in Patrick’s chest—he’s not sure what, but it’s unaccustomed to squeezing whatever it is. 

Patrick thinks there might be a remarkable amount of truth to their joking; it would all be simpler if Jonny weren’t so strange and charming.

*

Prince Strange and Charming is in a royally pissy mood. He’s been pacing around the bedroom for the better part of an hour. Patrick can hear it from the basement as clear as he can hear the rain falling outside. But he can also feel the frayed nerves behind Jonny’s unsettled mood. It makes Patrick antsy too. He’s hot and cold and hot again, vacillating like a fever patient. So when giving Jonny space all afternoon doesn’t resolve anything, Patrick decides to continue his Help Jonny campaign. He can’t be Jonny’s guide, but he can still be helpful.

Jonny blinks at the hot chocolate in Patrick’s hands. Two mugs. “What’s all this?”

Patrick shrugs. “You’re having temperature problems right?”

“...Yeah?”

“So this is a pick-me-up,” Patrick grins. “And you can like, focus your thermo-whatever on this,” he gestures with the steaming mugs, nearly sloshing the rich contents everywhere.

“Whoa!” Jonny flinches. “Watch where you’re slinging that.” He’s smiling, though, and herds Patrick out to the kitchen since “You can’t be trusted around carpets.”

It’s nice, just sitting and sipping and talking shit about Jonny’s favorite teams growing up. (Patrick has cleverly rigged this conversation since Jonny can’t shit on the Sabres.) Patrick tries to use his, like, mind’s eye or whatever to visualize the temperature of the hot chocolate and the cool kitchen counter beneath it as the temperatures slowly adjust to one another. He has no idea if that’s anything, if that’s _doing_ anything for the guy sitting next to him. Patrick is just winging it, but as far as he can tell, he isn’t making things worse.

Patrick’s dad blows in and out of the kitchen with a quick greeting and a gesture between Patrick and the calendar on the fridge punctuated with pointed eye contact. No, Patrick has not forgotten about their scheduled chat tomorrow. The whole interaction is very Coach Kane instead of Dad. During this break before the puck drops on the playoffs, his dad has been home a lot more than usual and Patrick’s lack of an agent has consequently become a bigger topic of discussion. 

“Wanna talk about it?” Jonny offers after Patrick’s dad is back in his parents’ bedroom and Patrick’s head is back on the kitchen island. 

Patrick groans, low and sullen. “He wasn’t this insistent three months ago. We were all on board with the plan and then ever since we lost in the first round of the playoffs, he did a 180.” Patrick raises his mug to his lips, but pauses because he can’t help adding, “I mean, how am I supposed to interpret that? He lost faith.”

Patrick slugs back the rest of his cocoa like it’s as Irish as he is. He pivots. “Do you like your agent?”

“My agent?”

“Yeah, your agent.”

“Um,” Jonny sets down his mug, face lost in thought. “Well I’m glad I have him. Spent all morning with him, and the state of my contract as of this morning, given our depth at center and the fact that I spent half the season on the couch, is… not great. So if I manage to land a decent bridge deal down the road, it certainly won’t be my achievement. Maybe if I won the Conn Smythe I could take some of the credit. Maybe.”

“C’mon, it’s not so dire.”

In lieu of a response, Jonny silently levels him an amused look out of the corner of his eye, lips pressed to the rim of his empty mug.

“Oh,” Patrick says.

Jonny tests the yoke of the shirt he’s wearing with a little shrug. Their shoulders are sort of touching now, Patrick realizes with a prickling of goosebumps. Patrick opens his mouth to tell Jonny that he’ll just have to win the Conn Smythe, then, _duh_ , but he’s cut off.

“Oh my god, tell me you two are gossiping over hot cocoa. Please tell me that’s what I’m seeing here.”

Patrick puts thumb between his eyebrows to knead out the sudden knot of tension there. “Go to bed, Erica.”

Infuriatingly, she takes her time wrangling the milk out of the packed fridge, smiling wide. Fucking Erica. 

“Go to bed, Erica,” Jonny says.

“Look at you two, working together,” Erica says. 

“ _Go,_ ” Patrick and Jonny say in unison, then lock eyes, embarrassed.

Erica cackles all the way up the stairs and into her room. Even the click of her door shutting sounds mocking. 

“How’s the temp sensitivity, now?” Patrick says to change the subject. Beyond flusterment over Erica being Erica, that shaky unease from earlier has bled out of Patrick’s mind. “Better, right?” 

Jonny cracks his neck in a way that should not be arousing. “So you can feel that, too, eh? I’ve been wondering how you didn’t figure out the touch thing sooner. I would’ve thought you would feel the chills and prickles and whatever, like you did with sound and smell?”

“Well yeah but I thought that was just—” _because you are the hottest thing I’ve ever seen and you make me laugh and the air always feels different on my skin whenever you’re around because we should be touching why aren’t we touching._ Patrick bites his tongue to stop the words. 

“You thought that was just…” Jonny prompts slowly. 

“Excuse me, my phone is buzzing.” 

Jonny stays put, but his voice chases after Patrick, out of the kitchen and down the basement stairs, all confident and matter-of-fact, “No it isn’t.” 

Fucking sentinels.


	4. Chapter 4

Patrick has made three calls to Erica and left three voicemails. Everyone else with a car is tied up: Jonny and Patrick’s dad are still at practice and Patrick’s mom is getting dental work done. Plus, loathe as Patrick is to admit it, Erica is really more competent about this crap than he is, since their parents made her get her Car Care badge in Girl Scouts before they’d buy her one. That doesn’t help Patrick right now, though, stranded on the side of the road watching his engine smoke ominously. Maybe their parents should have insisted on a Check Your Fucking Phone badge, too.

He gives up and calls a tow truck. Later, in the open garage of the auto shop, he calls Erica again because he can’t get home without her. From the way the mechanics are talking, he’s not going to be behind the wheel of his jeep anytime soon. It’s going to be in repair for some time (and for a frankly astounding amount of cash). 

While the experts confer and order parts in the back office, Patrick leans against the bricks that separate two open garage doors and rattles off the address of the auto shop in his latest voicemail to Erica. He’s listing off the five and only five acceptable excuses in the entire universe for her ignoring him right now when his attention is stolen by a car making a sudden and unadvisable u-turn on the street in front of him.

Patrick snorts to himself, muttering, “What an idiot.”

It’s not until the car pulls into the auto shop’s drive and stops right in front of Patrick that he realizes how right he was. He hangs up.

“Jonny?”

“What happened here?” Jonny storms out of his car, looking over Patrick and then the black jeep behind him. 

“Did Erica call you?” Patrick frowns. It would be just like her. He isn’t sure whether Erica just sees Jonny as a new way to give Patrick shit or there’s more to it, but either way, Patrick’s had enough of it.

“What? No. Was there an accident? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just engine trouble. I’ve been calling Erica all afternoon, but no dice. How did you… What are you doing here? I thought you were had practice.”

“Ended early. There’s this coffee place one street up from here and I was looking for parking. Hard not to spot this ugly thing from the road.” Jonny flicks the brim of Patrick’s Team USA cap, then actually tweaks Patrick’s nose there like casually touching is a thing they do. “So what’s wrong with the car?”

It takes Patrick a moment to recover from the contact. “What isn’t? They’re talking about the engine and the suspension and ordering new parts. It’s bananas.”

“Hm.”

“They—” Patrick’s interrupted when Jonny’s presses a finger against Patrick’s lips. He’s staring off into space with his head at a telltale angle. Patrick opens his mouth to protest this treatment—he doesn’t care who Jonny’s eavesdropping on, this shit is not okay—when he realizes he’s essentially kissing Jonny’s finger. That shuts him up all over again.

The finger falls away. Jonny slides his eyes back down to Patrick’s face. “Yeah, they’re ripping you off.”

“What?” Patrick fumes. But Jonny is already walking past him into the garage, shedding his jacket en route to the jeep. He carelessly swings his jacket up to hang on the open hood before snagging some gadgets from the rolling tool bench and diving into the inner machinations of Patrick’s jeep headfirst.

It’s still hot under the hood and when Patrick rounds the corner, Jonny is already smudged with oil and sweat. Patrick steals an anxious glance at his phone. No texts.

“Do you even know what you’re doing?” Patrick says even though he’s already resigned to Jonny doing what he wants. Even if he doesn’t fix the jeep, at least he can take Patrick home.

“Nope,” Jonny says, dry as kindling. “Just switching cables around at random.”

Patrick pulls a face but lets him work in peace. He doesn’t ask Jonny how he knows how to do this, but only because Jonny clearly expects him to. It rankles Patrick to be shown up by Jonny in such a masculine field, but it’s no chore to watch him work. Jonny leans in, bent over the grill to check something further back. Patrick must make a sound because Jonny ducks his head back out to check on him. Faking a cough, Patrick studiously inspects the engine. Jonny says nothing, just goes back to work with a smirk. 

The next time he peeks at his phone, Jonny catches him at it.

Patrick hurriedly asks the first question to pop into his head, eager to fill up the dead air. “What are you doing out this way, anyway? You don’t drink coffee.”

“That matchmaking service my mom uses organized a blind date for me with a guide. She wanted to meet at this new cafe near her university,” Jonny’s voice echoes from under the hood. 

“Uh, aren’t you going to be late?”

“No big deal. Nearly done anyway.”

Jonny’s being cavalier enough about it that Patrick has to ask, “Have you been going on these all the time and I just never noticed?” The idea makes him itchy.

“Nah. I went on more when I was on IR in the winter, but I’ve been too busy. This one’s just to make my mom happy, anyway.”

Patrick wants to ask him more while they’re on the subject because Jonny didn’t give him any answers that night at the pool hall. Ever since he first heard about these guide dates, Patrick has been curious about how they pick likely candidates and what they do together and at what point Jonny knows someone isn’t compatible, but he’s distracted by his phone vibrating before he gets the chance.

Erica texts, _Sorry Patty!!!!!!! On the way, there in 5!_

Fuck. Patrick looks from his Blackberry to Jonny in his tight, damp t-shirt. (Wait, is that Patrick’s shirt? And when did it get so damp, anyways?) To his Blackberry. To Jonny wiping his forehead and smearing oil across it in an inexplicably attractive way. To his Blackberry. Erica will never let this go. Jonny wipes his hands off on his shirt looking like Mr. July in a different version of the pinup calendar nailed to the garage wall. (His blind date’s going to have a helluva time focusing.) Patrick grimaces at the text and jams a hand into his hair.

“All done,” Jonny announces, then takes notice of Patrick’s expression. “That Erica?”

Patrick nods.

“… She on her way?”

Patrick nods.

Something must show on his face, because Jonny simply evaluates him up and down with this potent knowing look in his eyes and says, “Okay.”

Jonny slouches himself back under the hood for a moment, tweaking something that protests with a worrying _pop!_ Then he’s up again replacing the tools and eyeing Patrick. “I’ll just go make sure your mechanic friend knows what needs to be fixed, here, and be on my way” he says and makes his way into the back office. “He should finish up just in time for Erica to get here.”

He’s out again in under a minute, striding past Patrick with a cocky, conspiratorial grin. He doesn’t say, ‘You’re welcome,’ and he doesn’t say, ‘I was never here.’ He doesn’t say anything, just strolls back out to his car and pulls away. 

Patrick blinks. The mechanic is shell-shocked when he emerges from the office, flinching when Patrick meets his eyes. He wordlessly turns to the jeep and gets to work fixing whatever it was that Jonny re-broke. Yeah, Patrick inwardly agrees, sentinels are sort of terrifying. 

Erica shows up then, just in time to watch the mechanic finish up and for Patrick to explain that he can make his own way home, now, actually.

*

Whether he has practice in the morning or not, Jonny joins Patrick outside most afternoons. Now that the weather’s pleasant, they go out for shooting practice or roller hockey. Jonny ought to be tired of hockey for the day, or just _tired_ in general, but he almost never passes up the opportunity to play with Patrick. Sometimes if he’s already done conditioning, he’ll just spot Patrick. (“Every time you don’t finish a set, Turris wins.”) It’s like working out in Robbie Drummond’s garage except it’s absolutely nothing like that.

Patrick hasn’t decided yet how he wants to spend the day when Jonny’s telltale gait thumps down the basement stairs. Jonny has the whole day free. Out of habit, Patrick reaches up to hit the lights before catching himself. 

Jonny moves through the room smoothly, face unruffled and inscrutable. “You can still turn the lights off, you know.” Patrick’s heart lurches uncomfortably and starts to race before Jonny adds, “Save electricity.”

“Quit trying to seduce me,” Patrick chirps without missing a beat. It’s what he would’ve said to Gags. It is, however, still a mistake.

He’s on thin ice as it is. Becoming friends with Jonathan Toews has really only made Patrick’s life more complicated. His fantasies have ramped up with an intensity that’s almost scary—it’s like surround-sound now, every single night. Last night he tried to rub one—a totally harmless one—out while watching some vanilla shit. He’s not sure when that got away from him; it was only once he was coming down that he reflected on the fading image of Jonny’s self-satisfied leer behind his eyelids. The come was already cooling on his stomach when he licked his lips and winced because they were so chewed up and swollen. How hard had he been biting his lips to keep quiet? 

Jonny cracks open a Gatorade and leans back against the fridge while he waits for Patrick to get his sneakers on. “Please, like I’d have to.” And… is Patrick imagining it or did Jonny just glance at his lips? “You forget, I can hear your heart.”

Patrick’s fingers fumble with his laces. Jonny’s joking. Patrick knows this. He knows Jonny can’t hear emotions or smell bicuriosity. He _knows._ So he makes a show of rolling his eyes. “You don’t scare me.”

“Lie.”

Patrick freezes. “That’s not a real thing,” he says without a trace of conviction. “You can’t tell if someone’s lying. That’s just some bullshit they put in cop shows and soaps.”

“Are you sure about that?” Jonny dabs a stick of SPF a million across his serenely amused expression.

“Ye-es,” Patrick huffs, when in fact the internet has been excruciatingly reluctant to give him a straight answer on the subject.

“Lie.” 

Oh, there is an expiration date on that smirk of Jonny’s. Patrick will make damn sure of it. “Here’s a lie for you: you’re gonna have a shred of dignity left when we leave the basketball court.” Patrick scoops up a basketball and makes for the stairs.

“Aw, you think you’re telling the truth.” Jonny steals the ball when Patrick passes him and holds it up out of reach. “You just keep on believing. That’s what counts, buddy.”

If Jonathan Toews thinks he’s the first one to play keep-away with Patrick, then it’s his turn to be sorely mistaken. They’ve been working out together a decent amount over the past few weeks, but Jonny’s still unprepared for the height Patrick manages to get on his sudden upward spring. It isn’t enough to wipe that smile off Jonny’s face, but Patrick isn’t pressed for time. They have the rest of the day ahead of them. Ball safely in hand, Patrick takes the stairs two at a time. 

Patrick’s jeep is running fine now. Jonny, a veteran of several summer jobs helping out in auto shops, insisted on looking it over again when Patrick brought it home from the shop. But today they forgo cars entirely and jog to the courts as a warmup. Even that devolves into pigtail pulling. Jonny has this really annoying habit of keeping himself just in front of Patrick, one shoulder overlapping. It’s not that Jonny insists on being ahead (which is also annoying), it’s that he insists on sticking so close like some sort of reverse drafting strategy.

The fourth time their shoulders knock together (along the completely empty sidewalk, which is wide enough for four of Patrick), Patrick bursts, “Would you quit that?”

“Quit what?” Jonny says with genuine curiosity.

“Running right in front of me like that!”

“If you don’t like it, maybe you should just be faster.”

So it’s inevitable that they arrive at the park already a little winded and bruised from jostling each other. 

The game starts off slow because every time Patrick pulls off something slick, Jonny stops play and demands that Patrick show him how he did it. It’s like volunteering at a skating clinic except instead of a tottering mass of excited peewee players, it’s Jonny and his scrunched, deeply serious expression. 

“You wanna keep your head up, though. Especially when you—”

“Especially,” Jonny breaks in.

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you said _ex_ pecially, and that’s not a word,” Jonny says. It’s become a running theme in Patrick’s life for Jonny to be at his most irritating when Patrick is taking time out of his day to help the fucker.

“I said especially. It’s not my fault you’re especially deaf,” Patrick snaps without thinking. The irony hits him and he misses a beat in his dribbling. Jonny seizes the opportunity, stealing the ball and executing a clean-cut jump shot. He’s been paying attention.

“Fuck.”

“I’m sorry what was that?” Jonny cajoles. “I couldn’t hear that, what did you say?”

“Shut up,” Patrick murmurs, idly dribbling in an attempt to move on from the conversation.

“No, I’m gonna need you to stand by calling me deaf just a second ago. _Me._ ”

But Jonny isn’t smirking when he’s down by ten. He’s dripping with sweat, trying to hide how winded he is. In all fairness, it is a lot hotter out than Patrick anticipated. Patrick’s normally not so sensitive to heat, but he can’t handle it today. It’s the first time he’s ever played skins just out of necessity; he’s basically wearing his threadbare tank top as a necklace before they’re even half an hour in. It’s only April for god’s sake. 

They take a water break when Patrick hits thirty points. By that point, they’re too in sync for Patrick to take Jonny by surprise. Plus Jonny is pretty much a graduate of the Patrick Kane School of Ballin’ now and it shows. Jonny is only down by six. The brief break is strange. It’s like the rhythm of the game has put Patrick in some weird trance. He uses the shirt to dreamily mop his brow. His skin prickles with every vacillation between warming sunlight and cooling sweat. The smell of cut grass fills his lungs. Patrick takes a beat, dazed and lost in the moment. It’s weird, yes. But it’s kind of nice? He’s not sure what it is about how he’s feeling today. Maybe he’s just happy. 

“Okay. Best of forty, let’s do it.”

It’s a plain fact that Patrick is better at basketball. Jonny never played in high school like Patrick did. But Jonny makes up the difference with hustle. It’s terrifying to behold, but in this instance, Jonny’s even more competitive than Patrick. It’s immediately apparent that Jonny’s gonna be that guy who sustains a season-ending injury playing foosball at some point, Patrick thinks fondly. In a different world, maybe Patrick would be that teammate who baited him into it. It’s a strangely pleasing thought. 

Jonny is crowing about a big comeback when Patrick shuts him right up with a beautiful three-pointer. Nothing but net. Jonny’s big dumb face is so affronted that Patrick can’t help getting all up in it, doing a dorky little celly. “Brick wall, waterfall—” Jonny puts him in a loose headlock just to shut him up. Patrick goes still for a split second. There have been all of these casual touches lately, almost pointed. Like Jonny’s trying to show Patrick the kinds of contact he’s okay with. So Patrick tries to relax and be okay with it too. 

The tides turn against him. Jonny passes him by earning a slew of sloppy points with smugly hypocritical comments like, “You can’t teach that.”

“Best out of sixty,” Patrick pants. He isn’t leaving the court until he’s got a win.

Jonny grins.

*

“Ow!”

“Hold still, you’re making it worse.”

“ _You’re_ making it worse-hssss.” Patrick can’t help the hissing. “Careful!”

“Now you know how I feel,” says Jonny. 

Patrick woke up from his post-basketball nap feeling like his skin went through the washer and dryer on their hottest settings. Too tight, too dry, too warm, ow ow _ow._ In retrospect, deciding to play shirtless for hours and hours in the midday sun was not his sharpest decision. He totally goofed on sunscreen in his haste to leave the house and hand Jonny’s ass to him, and now Patrick is paying the price. 

_“Ow!”_ Patrick accuses.

“Stop. Moving.”

“I can’t help it,” Patrick insists, squirming again as cold aloe hits his shoulder blade. The worst of it is limited to his back since the sun was angled opposite the basketball hoop and Patrick is all offense, baby. “I’m just the victim here.”

“You’re the one who wanted to play to seventy,” says Jonny, totally unsympathetic, despite the fact that Jonny was the one gunning for best of eighty at the end. He’s just salty because Patrick totally won.

The contact isn’t that weird since Jonny’s basically just slathering aloe on in hope that it’ll shut Patrick up long enough for them to at least get through a full game of NHL 06. They haven’t made it through a whole game yet without Patrick needing to pause. The burn keeps getting worse is the thing. Patrick tried keeping a cold water bottle between his shoulder blades, which made Jonny shiver just looking at it, but that didn’t cut it. So here they are. Jonny isn’t rubbing the aloe in at all. His hands just spread it like a palette knife. All Patrick feels is the pain and the cold.

Sunburn or no, Patrick isn’t an exhibitionist like some people he could mention. So he still puts a shirt on, just the weird oversized Sabres one so that it won’t stick to his back as much. (It’s the stretched one he put on last week and had a ten minute freakout because he thought he’d somehow lost bulk.)

They’re playing NHL 06 in the basement because Jonny is incapable of accepting defeat. He did not take kindly to the way their basketball game ended. Considering Patrick’s gnarly sunburn, he figures they both lost, but try explaining that to Jonny. The guy’s face is so intent on the screen that Patrick is surprised there aren’t two little holes starting to melt into the glass. 

“You do know that pushing the buttons harder doesn’t do anything, right?” Patrick checks after Jonny’s controller makes a particularly distressed squeak. 

Jonny just grunts and continues button mashing while Patrick’s team streaks up the ice on a breakaway. As the play comes to a head, they lean forward in unison, muscles tensing with focus, arms resting on knees like they’re at the faceoff dot.

Jonny tosses his controller in a fit. Fucking score. 

“Yes! Backhand, forehand, your mom’s han—” Patrick’s arms shoot up in victory and all the air is stolen from his lungs.

Patrick’s been silent for five full seconds when Jonny cautiously ventures, “Okay there?”

Patrick shuts his eyes and nods minutely. He doesn’t trust his voice. His back feels like it just had a foot and a half of heavy duty duct tape ripped off it all in one go. His arms stay rigidly aloft. He’s too scared to put them back down. “Ow?” is all that escapes him, and it’s pitchy at best.

“You’re gonna have to move again eventually,” Jonny says after some patient waiting. His tone would probably be nicer if he hadn’t just lost that game in OT. “… you know that, right?” 

Not true. Patrick could just slowly lay down face first in exactly this position and maybe not move again ever. Patrick bites his lip as he slowly brings his arms down in a way that least disturbs his screaming back. He’s never been so careful of his limbs before, his skin. 

“…You really feel like this all the time?”

Jonny’s eyes soften. “Nah, it’s not so bad. Here, let’s see your back.”

“Feels super dry again. And hot.” Patrick pivots with his legs to give Jonny access without actually moving his back. He’d been so focused on the game that he never even noticed the burn returning.

“Hang on.” Jonny lifts the hem of Patrick’s t-shirt with a simple brush of the pad of his thumb up Patrick’s spine. The touch is too light to be made painful by the sunburn, so instead it just feels… loud. Louder than the whole minute of Jonny coating his back combined. Loud like a chorus of bright bells being rung all the way up his spine in the midst of total silence.

Funny, Patrick’s mouth is suddenly really dry, too. 

Jonny’s saying something behind him. The only part Patrick catches is, “... already totally soaked in. Just disa-fucking-peared. Geez, okay, hold on.”

Patrick hears the fridge door open and shut. “How does it look?”

“Not too bad. Redder, but no peeling. Sorry. We should’ve taken a break to check on it earlier.” The couch springs bounce as Jonny settles back in behind him. “Tarp off,” he orders. 

Patrick refuses to have feelings about that. Just takes his shirt off and has no feelings whatsoever.

“Alright, real cold,” Jonny warns right before he paints ice from Patrick right shoulder blade to the ribs on his left side. When did Jonny put the aloe bottle in the fridge? And when exactly did he fall from heaven?

It’s totally different from before. It might be intuition or something else entirely, but Patrick can just feel a difference in Jonny. Apparently abandoning his strategy of just encasing Patrick in a coat of aloe an inch thick, Jonny moves in gentle sweeps, letting the thin layers of cool aloe soak in before adding another. Patrick struggles with breath. This isn’t like a massage. Massages are knots being untangled until your body is legible again. This is like a light being turned on, like the sun slowly rising, like parched earth feeling rain. 

Jonny’s long fingers linger below Patrick’s ribs between coats, uncertain. “Better?”

“Yeah,” Patrick lies on a long-awaited exhale. Better is not what it is, but he doesn’t want it to stop just yet. It still kind of hurts is the thing; sweeping gestures of hot hands, hot contact, trailed by a wake of chilling aloe. Too tender, too hot, too cold; the only in between is Jonny.

Hands smooth up his spine. Thumbs start to add sweet little flourishes and if Jonny does feel like this all the time Patrick does _not_ know how he deals with it. As is, his body is like two inches away from doing something embarrassing (Patrick isn’t sure what, but embarrassing is a given) unless Patrick puts a stop to this. 

In a true feat of timing, right as Patrick unclenches his jaw and opens his trap to end this tableau with a dismissive ‘thank you,’ the edge of one of Jonny’s close-trimmed fingernails scrapes over that unreachable spot right beneath Patrick’s shoulder blade and it’s all over. 

It isn’t a groan, it’s a whimper. And it isn’t a quiet one. 

The basement is silent as the grave save Patrick’s pulse drumming in his ears without rhythm. Patrick pictures Jonny in suspended animation. Patrick pictures Jonny sitting cool and still behind him, totally frozen like a modern marble sculpture. Patrick pictures Jonny politely excusing himself. 

Just one more time that Patrick was wrong about Jonathan Toews.

It’s warm, which throws Patrick off. Jonny’s hands are cool but his mouth is _hot_ and—woah back up. The shift came so fast and from so far out of left field that the facts of what’s happening are hitting Patrick out of order. The biggest point to absorb is that Jonny’s hot mouth is on his and it isn’t shy. Patrick notices a hand framing his jaw; the hand Jonny used to reel Patrick in, chin over shoulder. And now Jonny’s using that same hand to brace Patrick for a second kiss. Because that’s what these are. Kisses. Shuffling his tanned legs on the couch to face Patrick better, Jonny presses hard against Patrick’s swollen, bitten lips and that’s when Patrick’s painstakingly sealed bottle of self control comes unstoppered all at once. Pop.

There are so many gaps in Patrick’s knowledge: When and how exactly they came to face each other. When Jonny’s hands came to frame Patrick’s face, both thumbs lined up with his jaw, long fingers tucked into Patrick’s short curls, pulling Patrick into him like an oxygen mask. When Patrick got his tongue into Jonny’s beautiful mouth, got his fingertips hooked over those collarbones that have been distracting him since December. When exactly they mutually decided that Jonny should be in the crook of the couch arm and Patrick should chase him there. What order any of these things happened in. None of this is information Patrick has. All he has are the places they’re touching.

He ducks down to kiss a trail along Jonny’s gorgeous neck and Jonny bows his head in kind, forehead resting against Patrick’s shoulder. Near his ear, Patrick hears a suspiciously long inhale through Jonny’s nose—Patrick’s focus might be preoccupied by the warm salt of Jonny’s skin but he’s pretty sure Jonny just smelled him. He’s distracted from the idea when Jonny nudges their mouths back together, tasting Patrick’s upper lip with an adventurous tongue before closing his mouth over it.

“Fffuck,” Patrick hisses. It’s like the aloe: It _hurts._ Too much sun and too little self control have left Patrick’s lips tender and a bit dry. The skin on his exposed back is still hypersensitive. Every squeeze and scrape brings a little lash of pain, but it’s like the aloe: It feels incredible.

It doesn’t occur to Patrick that Jonny’s got to feel as crazy as Patrick does until he strokes a thumb down the strong column of Jonny’s neck to the vulnerable hollow at its base. The barest tremor trembles under Jonny’s skin and Patrick has to force himself to break their kiss. The eye contact they share is enough to make Patrick tremble in kind. _Jonny feels just as crazy as Patrick does._

The air in Patrick’s lungs escapes all at once, breezing over Jonny’s neck where his kisses have left it damp. It’s a slippery, shivery chill to Jonny’s skin, but Patrick himself is the one whose skin breaks out in goosebumps. Patrick has to take a beat and keep panting, marveling at trancelike effect of their chemistry. He doesn’t know who’s feeling what.

It’s difficult to describe catching the runoff of someone else’s sensory awareness. It’s an odd phantom sensation, like pressing your tongue to an incipient ulcer and impossibly feeling the salt and iron and heat of blood that hasn’t even been spilled. You taste it but you don’t. 

Patrick’s dizzied brain can hear the heat in Jonny’s cheeks, can smell his smoldering, singular focus. It smells like burnt sugar and diesel and this is officially crazy talk. 

Patrick makes a deliberate swipe of his thumbnail under the back of Jonny’s t-shirt collar, just the way Jonny did earlier. Watches Jonny’s eyes, dark as pitch. Watches Jonny sink his teeth into his lower lip. God, even the emotions racing through Patrick are spiky and borderline painful. His hair stands on end. Making out with Jonny is like hugging a ball of electricity, but Patrick keeps coming back for more. 

Objectively, what’s happening is insane, but there’s no longer any room inside Patrick for that awareness. There’s barely room for air, let alone perspective. If his skin felt tight before, that was nothing compared to now. Filled to the brim with hormones and pent-up attraction, Patrick presses himself tight against Jonny and Jonny pushes right back like they’re trying to fit into one body. The part of Jonny that’s pushing up against Patrick’s thigh is particularly insistent, an electric shock all its own. Patrick’s fingers twitch. He’s eager to touch, to see what Jonny’s face would do if he did. 

Patrick never stuck his fingers into sockets as a kid. Maybe that’s why he’s itching to learn his lesson the hard way now. His curious palm slips down Jonny’s side.

“Boys! Dinner in ten!” His mom’s footsteps thud away from the open basement door on her way back to the kitchen. Neither of them even heard the door open, judging by Jonny’s dramatic flinch. Thank god the couch isn’t visible from the top of the stairs.

They’re left panting, neither one willing to turn their head away from the staircase, neither one sure of what he’ll find if he does. Patrick means to say something in the pin-drop silence, but he’s too busy trying to decide whether they just solved a puzzle or broke the shrinkwrap on a brand new one. 

Patrick’s eyes manage to leave the staircase only to get stuck on his own shirt. An observer might think he was being shy with his eyes downcast like this. He blinks at the Buffaslug logo. Patrick hates the new logo. This shirt is… 

“This shirt is yours, isn’t it?”

Jonny’s dark eyes pivot to Patrick and he breaks into an inexplicable grin. It’s the single most comforting thing he could have done in that moment, though Patrick didn’t know it until Jonny’s gone and done it already. He pulls Patrick in by the oversized t-shirt’s collar and presses an unexpectedly soft kiss to his lips. 

Patrick pulls back an inch and looks Jonny over. The flush in his lips, the cowlick in his hair. Words echo from a distance in the back of Patrick’s mind. _‘You just have to be careful,’_ Jonny said. But Patrick wasn’t. Patrick didn’t even think about being careful and Jonny has red marks on his shoulders to prove it. He could’ve sent Jonny into a fugue so easily. The facts march single-file across Patrick’s mind: Jonny still needs to be looking for a guide, this is a risk to his health, the playoffs start tomorrow, they drive each other nuts, Patrick doesn’t know if this is supposed to be a serious thing, and if it is a serious thing it’s doomed because the draft. 

Jonny blinks slower than normal, eyes soft and unfocused in a way Patrick thought him incapable of. It suits him.

“This is a terrible idea,” Patrick says dizzily, but he says it as he’s grinning and leaning back in for one more. (The last one. He has to get dressed for dinner. It’s the last one. He means it.)

*

Based on experience, Patrick would guess there was food at dinner. Ostensibly, Patrick’s family was there and conversations took place. But all Patrick could tell you for sure about the dinner table was the precise shade of the flush that clung to the back of Jonny’s neck all night.

*

Life hack: Don’t get involved with someone the night before they enter the playoffs. It’s a shortcut recipe for the bluest of balls. Patrick hasn’t seen Jonny in two days, unless you count watching him on the ice—and Patrick doesn’t count that. He doesn’t take it personally; playoffs are the reason for the season, their _whole_ season. Eighty-two games all leading up to this, and Jonny needs his head in the game. Hockey comes first.

So Patrick is caught off guard when he comes back from a skate session and descends the basement stairs to find Jonny on his couch. Jonny’s half curled up, not awake but Patrick can tell he’s not asleep either. Game 2 versus the Islanders is only a few hours away. It’s naptime but here Jonny is, propped against the corner of Patrick’s couch with his Sabres hoodie drawn up around his head, drawstrings pulled tight. 

It should be a goofy sight, Jonny sitting there with his hood almost all the way closed into a makeshift blindfold to soften the blow of stimuli. Only the tip of his nose and his mouth remain visible, with the latter parted open for Jonny to breathe deep and slow. It must be an intense meditative state. Jonny doesn’t even seem to know Patrick is there. It shouldn’t be gorgeous, of all things; it should be ridiculous. 

Or rather, it _is_ a ridiculous sight, but all Patrick can focus on is how soft Jonny’s lips look. Jonny can’t see him staring, so Patrick drinks his fill. It’s just that Jonny is almost always a straight line, a measured and controlled presence. Here and now, he’s all soft and lax with his loose muscles melted into the couch, unworried about micromanaging every shred of his attention. Patrick has never seen the curve of Jonny’s lips so relaxed and inviting before, their warm color offset by the blue of his hoodie. And somehow it’s Patrick who loses track of his attention, zooming in fully on the revelation of Jonny so unruffled in repose until all he can think about is how those lips _feel_. One moment he’s on the stairs and the next, he’s got the pad of his thumb brushing along the soft bow of Jonny’s upper lip as lightly as he’s able.

Jonny startles a bit, and Patrick is just as startled at himself. He hadn’t meant to… do whatever it is he’s doing. But before he can withdraw his hand and make a bumbling apology for disrupting Jonny’s nap or invading his space, Jonny’s mouth parts just the tiniest bit, his head stretches into the touch just the tiniest bit. Patrick sucks in a small gasp. How the hell is he so affected by such a miniscule thing? His heart is suddenly going so fast that it’s just a continuous drum roll. 

The drum roll hits its peak when Jonny’s tongue pokes out to tentatively taste Patrick’s finger and Patrick’s heart just stops. It’s like Jonny’s trying to figure Patrick out with every sense at his disposal. Patrick might make a noise, he isn’t sure; the only thing he’s capable of in that moment is spreading the shine on his thumb across Jonny’s bottom lip before diving in to taste it for himself. 

Patrick doesn’t know what they’re doing but at the moment it doesn’t feel remotely casual.

They make it about ten minutes before Jonny has to coax Patrick away from his neck with a foggy expression. That faraway, overwhelmed look shouldn’t be such a turn on for Patrick, Christ. 

Breath catching, Patrick makes himself ask, “Too much?” Jonny has a game later.

Jonny only nods once, like it costs him. As they pull away from one another, Patrick’s brain fruitlessly tries for the millionth time to make sense of what this is. Jonny is a fuckbuddy Patrick can’t fuck. He’s a sentinel Patrick can’t guide and a teammate Patrick can’t play with. Where does that leave them?

They have to sit next to each other on the couch pretending to watch a replay of Game 2 between the Wild and the Ducks. Pretending they aren’t hard. Pretending Patrick isn’t still buzzing in all the places they were touching two minutes ago. Buzzing from the achingly careful way Jonny brushed a hand down Patrick’s healing back. He’s almost dizzy. It’s a fucking weird situation they’re in, but Patrick can’t pretend he regrets it. He doesn’t know anyone like Jonny, anyone who’s half so infuriating and fascinating. It makes no sense, the way Jonny riles Patrick up but puts him at ease at the same time. Lately when he’s around, Patrick unconsciously slips off his anxieties like a pair of old shoes. He’s never met anyone who made him feel stronger and more vulnerable at the same time—

“Stop that,” Jonny snaps beside him, voice strained, almost punched-out.

“Stop what?” When Patrick swings his head to face Jonny, they’re mirror images of wide-eyed caught-out expressions.

Unclamping his visibly zipped mouth, Jonny tells him, “Turning over the puck.” He gestures at the TV screen. “Minnesota’s gonna get swept if they keep it up.”

“Oh.”

“I’d better get dressed for the game,” Jonny says, standing and stretching.

“Good luck if I don’t see you.” And he doesn’t.

It’s not for lack of trying, but they barely see each other at all during Round 1. Jonny’s putting in a good performance even though he’s still pretty tense. The Sabres lead the series 3-1.

There’s a rare crossing of paths the day before Game 5. They actually run into each other in the hallway; Patrick didn’t even know Jonny was back in town. Jonny looks happy but tired, wearing two thirds of a game day suit. He must have just gotten in from New York. Of course, the carpool means that Patrick’s dad soon shuffles in from the garage behind Jonny, so Patrick just locks eyes with Jonny, cuts his eyes towards his bedroom door, and hopes Jonny catches his drift.

He must have because Jonny doesn’t look surprised when Patrick slips into his room fifteen minutes later, but that could always be down to Jonny’s hearing. Clearly it’s been too long. That’s Patrick’s explanation for why he sees Jonny sitting at Patrick’s desk and has to immediately pull Jonny up by the collar of his undershirt to kiss the life out of him. 

Jonny is panting like crazy when they break apart, with a faraway look in his eyes like he’s focusing on some inner turmoil. Fuck, did Patrick do too much? He reaches up to soothe a hand down Jonny’s neck in apology and Jonny actually flinches before Patrick can make contact.

That’s more than enough to make Patrick let go of Jonny’s shirt, back away with his hands up. “I’m sorry, dude. Did I—”

“No, it’s okay,” Jonny assures him, but it’s the hand he puts on Patrick’s shoulder rather than his words that help Patrick to ease up a bit. “Can we just…”

Jonny angles his head down to press a gentle kiss to Patrick’s lips. Heart pounding in his chest, Patrick mentally answers Jonny’s unfinished question, _Yeah, we can._

One consequence of being so careful of Jonny’s sensitivity is this unintended tenderness. Patrick has been trying hard to keep his head on straight about what this is between them. It’s become clear after the last time they saw each other in the basement that if Patrick doesn’t police himself, he’s going to end up doing some very unintentionally mushy opposite-of-no-strings shit. And as far as Patrick knows, this is just a physical thing. All week, he’s been kicking himself, resolving not to let his thoughts go out of bounds. But this gentleness they’ve contrived to protect Jonny takes the decision out of Patrick’s hands, semi-literally. His hands idle at his sides, uncertain where—or whether—he’s allowed to touch Jonny. Jonny’s fingers are similarly hesitant on Patrick’s shoulders, careful of Patrick’s healing burn. The contact between them is soft and hesitant to the point of reverence. It would painfully easy to get the wrong idea about it.

Jonny doesn’t push and Patrick doesn’t pull. Neither of them is taking control of the kiss or making it into one thing or another, but somehow it takes shape all on its own. It’s like a ouija board, imperceptibly directing their hands and lips until Patrick’s hand is pressed along Jonny’s spine, Jonny’s thumb is resting along the waistband of Patrick’s boxers, and neither of them has taken a breath in a long, long time. 

It’s slow, spare, surprisingly non-sexual, and maybe the best kiss of Patrick’s life thus far. 

Patrick’s lungs complain to him, insisting that, possessed or not, he needs air. At last, they break. Through his hand on Jonny’s back, Patrick can feel the complex percussion of Jonny’s vitals. Not just pulse and breathing, but the tapping and flutters of muscles and little things Patrick can’t even identify. There’s a thrumming like a runaway train hammering on the tracks. Patrick’s hand is too far from Jonny’s heart and the pace is too fast for it to be Jonny’s heartbeat but the damning rhythm of it is too particular to be anything else. 

“I can feel your heart beating through your back,” Patrick rasps to himself in a daze before clamping his mouth shut. See now, that is a great example of the kind of shit he is not supposed to be saying. Maybe if he kisses Jonny quick, he’ll forget Patrick ever said anything. 

He doesn’t know whether it worked or not, but Jonny’s warm and close, opening his mouth a little more like he can’t help it, so Patrick counts it as win either way. If Patrick manages to keep himself in line long enough, if he can be patient, maybe they’ll hit on the right way to do this without throwing Jonny off. Patrick hopes they do; a little slip of tongue hasn’t revved him up this much since middle school. They just need to take their time.

Time they don’t have.

Something about being this close turns Patrick into velcro; every single one of his limbs, his senses, his brain cells, sticks as close to Jonny as it can. The result is that he becomes totally oblivious, like his body expects Jonny to be lookout for him while Patrick mentally checks the fuck out. He has no idea if it’s the same for Jonny, but if it was, that might explain why neither of them anticipates the knock on the bedroom door. 

“Jon? I’m doing a load of laundry. I can get your road trip clothes while I’m at it,” Patrick’s mom offers helpfully, voice muffled through the door.

Patrick’s never had to hide in his own closet before. It’s roomier than he expected.

“Oh, I can get it myself. But thank you for asking, sorry,” Jonny is saying outside.

“Why are you apologizing?”

“Oh, I dunno. Sorry.”

Patrick’s mom laughs her way down the hall.

The bedroom door clunks shut again and then Jonny is opening the closet door for him. Patrick leans in the doorway with an amused smirk. “Never change,” he drawls.

Honestly, what good was a sentinel if he never saw this stuff coming? Maybe Patrick should take it as a compliment that Jonny gets so thoroughly distracted, but that doesn’t change the fact that they, as a pair, are incredibly bad at this fooling around business. The Kane house is just too full and busy and gregarious for sneaking around. Patrick’s bedroom is right next to the kitchen (the hub of activity in the house), the door to the basement has no lock, and the attic requires a whole production to get up to in the first place. No one ever comes to the basement at night, so their only window for the time being is after dinner and before Jonny crashes or should crash from playoffs exhaustion.

It’s late but not too late on one of the precious few nights off Jonny has before his brief break ends and Round 2 versus the Rangers begins. Patrick’s playing _Call of Duty,_ determined not to let Gags get the drop on him yet again, when Jonny pads down the stairs, fresh from the shower. Apparently, he didn’t even swing by his closet for a shirt on the way. Not that Patrick begrudges the view. (On the TV screen, Patrick dies.)

Jonny’s not looking at him, just towelling his hair as he descends the staircase, but his lips twist at the corners like he knows he’s being watched. En route to the pullout, Jonny tips to his left and slings a long arm down into one of Patrick’s hampers to fish out a shirt at random. 

At this point, they’re both aware of the shirt stealing. It came up that one time, but Patrick’s thieving was accidental—they both just have a fuckton of Sabres shirts. He doesn’t think the same could be said for Jonny’s kleptomania. Patrick watches Jonny stretch the t-shirt over his head and down his torso in one clean motion, but he doesn’t say anything about it. In fact, Patrick has never said anything about it because, well, Jonny might _stop._

Jonny’s current haul is a hideous shirt Patrick’s aunt had specially made for the family vacation to Orlando years back, just in case one of them got lost in a crowd or mistaken for someone with fashion sense. The design looks like it was done by a monkey using MS Paint clip art, the shirt itself was an offensive color that could only be described as ‘electric mustard,’ and Patrick absolutely loved it. 

_‘IF FOUND RETURN TO KANES, BUFFALO NY,’_ the shirt reads in bold black letters, bordered by little tropical designs. 

Patrick has to tear his eyes away. “What’d you get up to today?”

Jonny stretches out across the bed, watching Patrick start his next futile attempt at not being sniped. “Radio interview. Lunch with some of the boys. And then a signing at the mall,” Jonny says. “A really long one.”

“You’re ridiculous. You just won your first NHL playoff series and you’ve done jackshit to celebrate. You’re just working more. Do something to reward yourself, man.”

“What, like book a float tank?”

“What?” Patrick doesn’t even know what a float tank is, but unless the tank is full of beer or Rolexes, it doesn’t fucking count as celebration. “No!”

“Maybe a _really_ nice salad?” Jonny suggests and yeah okay he’s just trying to piss Patrick off.

Patrick lets Gags shoot him and tosses his controller aside. “That’s enough. You’re a damn disgrace to the colors, Toews. Take that off.”

Jonny scoffs.

“I mean it. You haven’t earned those stripes.”

Jonny blinks down at the cheaply printed design. “These are dolphins,” he points out.

“You still haven’t earned them,” Patrick sniffs. 

After shrugging like that’s a good enough explanation for him, Jonny tugs the clingy t-shirt off, struggling to get the sleeves past his biceps again. “Now what?” Jonny grins at him. 

Time promptly liquefies into indeterminable overlapping notes of sound and sensation. It’s like the moment their lips touch, they’re enclosed in a bubble and that bubble becomes its own entire world. Everything is magnified. When Jonny brushes a hand through the short hairs at the nape of Patrick’s neck, Patrick swears he can hear the motion as clearly as tall grass ticking in a summer breeze. There’s a buzz, too, but it isn’t honeybees—Jonny’s distracting mouth worries Patrick’s bottom lip and Patrick can only think of that.

On the outskirts of Patrick’s awareness, he hears the buzz again. Oh, his phone. Is it—yes! A reply! He’s been trying to play it cool, but Patrick is still a little geeked out to be texting Rick fucking Nash. As a former London Knight who went first overall, Nash reached out to Patrick earlier that afternoon with some words of encouragement. His thumbs pause over the keyboard, second guessing his reply. He wants to be cool but not, like, too cool.

“Really?” Jonny says from the sidelines, dry as dirt. His flat stare observes Patrick still hunching over his phone, leaving Jonny to twist in the wind.

“You’re just jealous ‘cause I’m out here texting NHL stars like it ain’t no thang.” Patrick is of course too classy to mention it, but Danny Briere got in touch with him, too. (It was a cool gesture since Briere is someone all too familiar with being undersized and underestimated in the NHL.) (Not that Jonny would be impressed by this, anyways. To him, Briere was just the dude in the locker room stall next to him.)

“Texting?” Jonny pronounces dubiously. “You’re _hooking up_ with an NHL star.”

“Really? Where?”

Jonny gives him that dopey sarcastic laugh of his that puts his mouth in a little ‘O’ shape, then topples Patrick. 

It’s nice when it’s like this. Time is against them, though. Patrick wishes they had more of it; more time in the year, more time in the day. It’s not even 10 PM yet, but Jonny’s fatigue is palpable despite the fact that he’s greedily tangled up with Patrick, all flushed and responsive.

Patrick has learned that Jonny is religious about sleep, even compared to his fellow professional athletes. As an unbonded sentinel, if Jonny is even just a little off-kilter, sleep is the first thing to go. On high alert, his hindbrain insists that the worst threats come at night. It takes the wheel and informs Jonny that under no circumstances will he fall asleep at his post. It’s a deep-seated instinct that even heavy drugs have trouble curtailing.

Jonny hasn’t said anything about it, but Patrick’s pretty sure he’s having trouble sleeping on the road. He always comes back with bruised eyes, and his first mornings back in Buffalo, Jonny always sleeps in as if he has to compensate. So as tempting as it is, Patrick can’t stomach the thought of depriving Jonny of his rest tonight. Every little REM cycle counts. Jonny’s got to give the Rangers what-for Wednesday night, for the sake of Patrick’s bracket at the very least.

That’s what makes Patrick snatch his own fingers back before they can get under Jonny’s waistband. He makes himself ease Jonny back and settle them both on their sides, feeling saintly as he does so. And yeah, smoothing his hand down Jonny’s neck when they aren’t even attached at the mouth is probably out of bounds. Quietly watching Jonny’s eyes flutter shut for longer and longer intervals is probably too much for whatever this is. Letting Jonny fall asleep there, sprawled in Patrick’s personal space, is a flagrant violation of the rules he set for himself. Screw it, Patrick thinks blissfully. 

Jonny gets a hat trick.

*

Okay, so technically that makes it Patrick’s fault it becomes a habit, Jonny passing out in the basement one way or another—but Jonny’s the one who keeps letting it happen.

It happens while they’re watching a movie, then while they’re watching a Western Conference game. The fourth time, Patrick falls asleep upstairs when he’s supposed to be helping Jonny pick out a game day suit. (It’s a tight fit in Patrick’s old bed. You had to _want_ it to make that sleeping situation work, whispers an insidiously hopeful part of Patrick’s brain—a part that Patrick tries his best to stuff into a locker.)

But it’s not like they end up in the same bed every night Jonny is in town. For instance, tonight is the night before one of the Sabres’ home games, and Patrick does a five-star job of falling asleep all by himself. He’s an adult who can do that. He knocks it out of the park. His individual sleep/60 stat is unreal.

Totally respectable, if you ignore the part where he wakes up in the middle of the night, gasping air through a raw throat. 

It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. As always, it seems silly in retrospect: Of course Patrick’s dad didn’t ring up every NHL front office to call Patrick in sick. Of course there wasn’t a school absence form that got Patrick excused from the draft, let alone one so absolute and final that Patrick would have to chase it down the road to catch it before it reached the post office. And their post office wasn’t on a boat and neither was Patrick’s house, but in his dream they both were. When he didn’t make it in time to intercept the absence form, he turned around to find his house sinking, sinking fast. He tried to swim back for it but the distance was too big and Patrick was too small and everyone was inside, oh god, everyone was in there—

In the silence, Patrick’s throat throbs with use. Had he been yelling? His breathing hasn’t even calmed down yet before the door at the top of the stairs flies open. 

“What’s wrong? Is it your hamstrings? I told you not to overdo those leg curls,” Jonny doesn’t pause in his speech or his movement until he’s practically on top of Patrick, looking him over for god knows what. Stab wounds?

Patrick blinks up at Jonny, inundated. “No, I’m fine. It was just a stupid nightmare.” Jesus, this was Jonny’s immediate response to a little night terror? His brain must be an exhausting place to live.

Jonny deflates with relief and gives Patrick’s shoulders a tender squeeze, still mindful of Patrick’s sunburn though it’s nearly completely healed, before rolling off him. Out of breath, Jonny huffs a little laugh and speculates, “Emilio Estevez again?”

Patrick rolls his eyes because, “Oh, I wish.” 

Wait. 

He sits up to fist a hand in Jonny’s collar. “Wait.” His eyes bore into Jonny’s in the weak light. “You fucker, you could hear me that whole time!”

“Only sometimes—”

“I can’t believe you, you asshole!”

“It’s not like I wanted to!” Jonny bursts. “I had my noise-cancellers on whenever I could, believe me. But even those can’t block out everything.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?!”

“Well, ‘cause that’s what you were so obviously trying to get me to do. What, did you think you were being subtle?” he laughs. “Honestly though, I couldn’t hear anything most of the time.”

As the wheels turn in Patrick’s brain, an entirely new wave of affront hits him. “You!” He points at Jonny though there’s no one else around. “You ignored me when I was dying!” He crabwalks away from Jonny dramatically. “You were gonna let me choke!”

Jonny doesn’t even expend the energy to roll his sleepy eyes. His unimpressed look should not be turn-on for Patrick. “Oh please, you weren’t even eating doritos. Trust me, I can tell. I can hear doritos from three kilometers out like a,” he struggles for words with the most anguished look Patrick’s ever seen on his face, “like if you put a wine glass in the garbage disposal.”

“I always knew you wanted me gone so you’d have early morning access to the weights, but,” Patrick pauses to flutter his eyes in exaggerated disbelief and horror. All those Lifetime movies are paying off. “I didn’t think you’d go so far.”

“Gimme some credit, Patrick. I have way better reasons to kill you than that.”

Patrick’s laugh comes out a little too fond because Jonny’s words came out a little too warm. It makes it sound like flirting, the _real_ kind. “Like the tennis ball?” Patrick teases.

“Lucky for you, that doesn’t bother me anymore. Drove me up the fuckin’ wall at first, though. You’re constant, man, just ‘click click click click bounce bounce bounce.’ You take up all my attention.” Jonny stops the thought there like he hadn’t meant to put it that way. He coughs and changes the subject. “My mom’s name isn’t Toews, by the way.” Jonny’s eyebrows lower when he adds, “Or Tits.”

“It’s strange that you felt the need to specify that second one, but noted and noted,” Patrick says peaceably. The last dregs of his nightmare are draining out from his head, and good riddance to them.

“Just making sure you don’t call her that on Wednesday. It’s Gilbert.”

“Huhwhat?” 

“Zheel-bear,” Jonny enunciates, slow and insulting. He’s so good at acting like Patrick is just someone he puts up with. Like he wasn’t racing down the stairs only minutes ago. Patrick ain’t fooled.

“No, not the name, dumbass,” Patrick swats Jonny’s chest. “Wednesday?”

“They’re coming to watch Game 2. What’s with the face? They’ve come, like, three times already.”

‘Well I haven’t met them,’ Patrick wants to argue, but that might sound. Uh. He keeps quiet.

“It’s. We’re—It’s not a whole thing,” Jonny says after a beat with a cornered look in his eyes. 

“No yeah. No, I know.” Patrick is glad his face is angled away. He knows. It’s easy to forget, though, tangled up like this. No-strings is by no means a new rodeo. So far in his life, Patrick has almost exclusively been in relationships that weren’t, well, exclusive. But none of them have ever been like this. He never spent the whole night with Meredith, never worried about meeting her people. He never forgot he couldn’t have her. Hell, he never wanted to have her that way in the first place.

He’s never wanted anyone like this.


	5. Chapter 5

“I feel like a dick.”

“You _are_ a dick.”

Patrick shoves Jess, but only gently since they’re walking pretty close to the street and, despite what he may have claimed on multiple occasions in the past, he doesn’t actually want to push her into oncoming traffic. “Nobody told me! How was I supposed to know?”

“Maybe if you stepped foot outside the gym every once in a while,” Jess comments. 

“I mean, did you guys get him anything?” Patrick whines quietly, hoping Jonny is too occupied walking ahead with his parents to eavesdrop.

It’s kind of funny, actually, to watch Jonny with his family. Patrick first noticed it at the restaurant, the way Jonny would always walk ahead of them, always stand between them and anyone else. It was difficult to pinpoint, but there was this weird dynamic where Patrick was waiting to see if Jonny would cut his parents’ food for them. Now he’s shepherding them down the street with a micromanaging hand gestures and a careful eye on their movements, even though Jonny doesn’t know where they’re going any more than they do. Patrick can’t help gawking. They aren’t kindergarteners. And yet his parents just take it, apparently super used to this behavior.

“I know Mom did,” Jess is saying beside Patrick. The two of them are bringing up the rear.

“No one told me,” Patrick says again, fiddling with a stray thread near his empty khaki pockets. “I got him jack shit.”

“Well _I_ didn’t get him a present either,” Jess sniffs. “I’m still mad at him.”

Though Patrick was out of town on the day in question, he heard plenty about Jonny menacing Jess’ prom date after the fact. Patrick fails to hide his snort, “C’mon, what was so bad about it, anyways?”

“Tanner didn’t try _anything,_ ” Jess complains with a tragic expression.

Goggling at her, all Patrick can say is, “Good.”

“ _An-y-thing._ I asked him to dance and he looked like he was going to pee his pants!” she cries. Patrick should probably try to be more empathetic, but her story continues to be nothing but hilarious. 

Their little procession of Kanes and Toewses is at a halt, waiting for the crosswalk signal to change. After dinner, Patrick’s mom suggested an ice cream place for dessert and they all decided to walk since it wasn’t too far. As usual, Jonny walks at the front of the pack. Jackie is following just behind him, apparently unbothered by the way he walks just in front of her and constantly herds her with his arm. In the past, it always seemed like Jonny kept to himself in a crowd, at least physically. Watching him with teammates or randos in a bar, Patrick has always gotten the impression that there was a little bubble around him. Maybe Patrick wasn’t paying enough attention. Maybe something changed.

The crosswalk light changes, but Jonny puts a hand on Jackie’s shoulder to wait for one last car to pass before giving her a light tap on the back as a go-ahead. Patrick isn’t the only one watching them. He finds himself next to Jonny’s parents, who have fallen behind, momentarily forgetting that they need to cross the street. The pair blink at Jonny and Jackie like they’re observing an exhibit at the zoo.

Patrick exchanged a few words with Jonny’s dad at dinner, but on the whole, Jonny’s parents have been wrapped up in conversation with Patrick’s parents all night. Patrick’s hands fidget in his pockets as he turns to Mrs. Gilbert. “So this is your third visit?”

“Our fourth, actually,” Mrs. Gilbert answers in her soft accent. “We were feeling guilty of neglect these past months, but it seems our Jonny has made himself a home here.”

She finally tears her eyes away from Jonny and Jackie to give Patrick a soft smile filled to the brim with maternal relief and affection. Patrick feels his ears go pink and he’s honestly not sure whether it’s from the idea of his home being Jonny’s home or simply the way she said ‘our Jonny.’

She glances back to where her son is micromanaging Jackie, tapping her right shoulder to ease her out of the way of another pedestrian. His mother clucks her tongue fondly. “Look,” she nudges Jonny’s dad. “Do you remember when he used to do that with David? Like a sheepdog.”

Jonny’s dad grins at the memory. “Don’t tease him about it too much,” he warns her. “You know he doesn’t know he’s doing it.”

Mrs. Gilbert rolls her eyes just slightly at being preempted. It’s a more ladylike facsimile of one of Jonny’s favorite facial expressions, and Patrick mentally tucks away this inexplicably precious information. “ _Bien sur,_ ” she says.

“Can’t help his biology,” Mr. Toews reminds her before turning to Patrick. “Congratulations, Patrick, on rookie of the year. I’ve congratulated your parents, but not you. Funny how that works, eh?”

It was announced this morning. Patrick puffs up a little, pleased. Not only the OHL’s rookie of the year, but the entire CHL’s.

“Thank you,” Patrick says, self-consciously swallowing the ‘sir’ he was tempted to add at the end. Chill, he tells himself, it’s just parents. 

They catch up with Patrick’s parents a block away from the ice cream parlor. Mrs. Gilbert walks shoulder to shoulder with Patrick’s dad. “We’ve got to thank you for taking such good care of Jonny, Coach Kane. He really seems like he’s finally settled here. It takes a load off our minds to know he has you and your family looking out for him. Keeping him on the right path.”

Patrick doesn’t miss the way his dad flinches. The way he looks away and rubs his neck like he’s… almost like he’s guilty?

“Not playing too bad, either,” Mr. Toews chips in.

“Oh, it’s our pleasure,” Patrick’s dad eventually gets out. Patrick stares, trailing a few paces behind them. What was that about? Has his dad somehow caught onto him and Jonny? And he’s, what? Feeling guilty about letting the Toewses’ son go gay under his roof? Thanks to the bad influence of own son? “Always love a player who turns it up for the playoffs.”

A month or two ago, that kind of comment would have stung Patrick in the worst kind of way, even though he’d know it wasn’t intended as a dig at Patrick’s performance during the OHL postseason. Now, Patrick mostly just agrees with his dad. Jonny’s been so clutch for the Sabres. Sure, watching him makes Patrick sore about the Knights’ first round exit, and it makes Patrick want to improve. But these days, he’s strangely sanguine about criticism from his dad, real or projected. Patrick wonders whether he’ll remain this much of a grown-ass adult if it turns out his dad really does know that Patrick is fucking around with his billet brother. As he strolls a couple paces behind the flock of parents, passing the neon signs glowing in the windows of laundromats and bars, Patrick’s stride doesn’t break. The idea of his dad finding out really doesn’t terrify him the way he thought it would.

“He is happy here, I think,” says Mrs. Gilbert. “All that’s left is finding him a guide. I have a good feeling about this batch of potential matches! Our headhunter works very hard. Nudge Jonathan if you could, Coach Kane. He was evasive tonight when I tried to give him the latest packet from the matching service. He is usually more responsible about going to the meetings, but you know how boys can be.” She shakes her head. “He hasn’t taken a meeting in weeks, since the start of playoffs. I know he is busy, but…”

“I’ll do what I can,” Patrick’s dad says. “The team would be thrilled if he found a match. Everybody wants it for him.”

“Should we have gotten him a cake, do you think?” Patrick’s mom wonders aloud. “I wasn’t sure.”

“Oh, Jonny has not had birthday cake since he was little,” Mrs. Gilbert assures her. “Last year we stuck a candle in a sweet potato.”

As she’s saying it, they walk past a convenience store and Patrick’s eye gets caught by the colorful shelves of trash in the window. He stalls in front of the storefront for a moment, then jogs to catch up with his family. He doesn’t want to fall too far behind; he might miss seeing what sterile, non-dessert sorbet atrocity Jonny will order. It’s a spectator sport at this point. 

After dessert, the group parts ways. Jonny drives his parents back to their hotel while the Kanes pile into two cars headed home. Patrick doesn’t go inside the house. There’s a quick trip he needs to make, so he hops out of his dad’s car and into his own. 

Patrick is just about to start up the jeep to leave on his little errand when Jonny’s car pulls into the driveway. He thought Jonny might’ve decided to chill in his parents’ hotel room for a while after dropping them off, but Patrick’s family only beat Jonny home by ten minutes. 

Before Jonny reaches the back door, Patrick rolls down his window and calls, “Get in, loser, we’re going shopping.”

To his credit, Jonny only jumps a little, swiftly recovering to roll his eyes and stroll up to Patrick’s car. It maybe shouldn’t make Patrick feel warm that Jonny doesn’t even question what Patrick is doing or where they are going. He just slings himself into the passenger’s seat and buckles up.

When they pull into the Sunoco five minutes from the house, Jonny just blankly watches Patrick put the car in park without saying anything. Knowing Jonny, Patrick so obviously wants Jonny to ask what they’re doing that Jonny has decided not to give him the satisfaction. 

“Hang tight,” Patrick tells him. “Just gotta run a quick errand.”

He returns five minutes later with a grocery bag in each hand weighing him down like ballasts. Originally, Patrick was going to go straight home, but Jonny’s already in the car so there’s nothing forcing them to head back right away. Time with Jonny is at a premium and Patrick is a man of economy when necessary. The Sabres leave for New York in the morning for Games 3 and 4. Patrick won’t see him for a week.

“How do you feel about historic parks named for dead randoms?” Patrick muses through the open tailgate as he swings his purchases inside.

As stubbornly opaque as ever, Jonny glances sideways at him and says, “Indifferent?”

“Perfect.” Patrick put the car in gear and heads east.

Turns out Jonny’s sentiments really _are_ perfect, because the park is fucking closed. Typical. Okay, so it’s past ten on a Wednesday night and that’s technically understandable. Still inconvenient. He wanted to hand Jonny his oversized ass on the basketball court again. Plus there were picnic tables and shit under some scenic type of tree Patrick couldn’t name you. Oh well.

“Well, shit,” Patrick remarks, pulling over to park outside the gate. “I guess here is as good as anywhere. C’mon.” Without the context of a basketball game, finding another set of picnic tables to take Jonny to would probably be too romancey anyways, what with the moonlight and all.

Jonny follows him around to the back of the jeep. Hopping up to sit with his legs hanging out the open back, Patrick nabs the crinkly gas station bags by their flimsy plastic handles and shoves them in front of Jonny’s nose. “Happy birthday.”

Jonny tips his head back for a brief belly laugh. “You’re a class act. For me?”

“You never told me it was your birthday. With a little more notice, I could have sprung for someplace nice. Maybe CVS, even.” Nevermind that Jonny’s actual birthday is still two days away; he’ll be on the other side of the state. 

Patrick is surprised by how warm the tiny, pleased grin on Jonny’s face is making him feel. He’s never had the type of girlfriend where there were little gifts and pet names and holding open doors. Not that Patrick’s in that type of relationship now (though he’s suddenly real tempted to start opening car doors for Jonny just because he knows it’ll piss him off); the point is that Patrick just didn’t know that making little gestures like this could make _Patrick_ light up.

Jonny takes a seat next to him, bouncing the car. As he works on opening the heavier bag, he raises his eyebrows slowly and then lets them drop heavily all at once like a tired bench presser once he succeeds. Jonny blinks at its contents. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Well, I had this whole idea to get you some wine since it’s supposed to be like catnip for you supersmellers or whatever. But I remembered too late we’re not in Canada, which means, ya know, underaged. So, I adapted on the fly,” Patrick gestures grandly at the gas station bags. “Next best thing.”

“ _Extremo Mango Electrico,_ ” Jonny reads aloud. The drink’s orange color actually is remarkably electrico, even in the dim light of the sparse streetlights, so the marketing team gets points for accuracy. Jonny pulls out the next bottle. “ _Lemon Lime._ ”

“Oh actually, that one’s for me.” Patrick snags it before Jonny gets any ideas. 

“Wow.” Jonny’s smiling, though. The third Gatorade bottle reads, “ _Watermelon Ice_ —oh, I’ve tried that one, actually. Nasty.”

“Shocker.”

“So you got me nasty ones on purpose?” 

“Eh. Picked pretty much at random, to be honest. Ooh, except the last one. Check it,” Patrick demands.

“ _ESPN… the Flavor._ ESPN the Flavor? What the…” 

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Patrick gushes. 

Jonny just sighs in (Patrick hopes) fond exasperation. “What’s in the second bag? Cigarettes?”

“Open it.”

Jonny unknots the handles carefully this time, angling the bag so the streetlight can shed light on what’s inside. A delighted laugh is surprised out of him. “Was this random, too?”

“Nah. I just thought. Well, how long has it been since you’ve had a Reese’s?”

Jonny pretends to think about it. “What year did _Armageddon_ come out?”

“Yeah, here you go, buddy.” Patrick hands him one.

“I feel like a dog you’re about to put down,” Jonny says through a mouthful of chocolate and peanut butter.

Patrick’s starting to get a buzz, even though they’re only drinking Gatorade. No, Patrick’s starting to get _that_ buzz. The one he gets around Jonny. The one where parts of his brain he didn’t know were there start lighting up and whirring until the buzz is almost literal. It’s a lovely feeling, high on stimulation to the point of floating. To keep himself from sighing in a way that’s too telling, Patrick steals a soft caramel from the plastic bag and occupies his mouth.

“If I get some kinda sugar hangover and tank Game 3, I’m making you do all the interviews.”

“Sure thing,” Patrick garbles through the caramel. “They’ll never know the difference. How’s this: Uh, just hafta play our game, sticks on pucks, y’know, Miller was huge, uh, team effort, uh, be better, pucks deep, no excuses, uhhh…”

“By all means, laugh it up. Just you wait until you have to do that shit night in and night out,” Jonny warns him. He takes a vicious and somehow haughty bite of the cherry Ring Pop that’s struggling to fit around his index finger. Jonathan Toews has never had candy in his sad little life if this little scene is at all indicative.

When they break into the Red Hots, Patrick’s head starts to go fuzzy. Jonny’s eyes shut as he savors the pleasant sting of spice. The fuzziness spikes, but Patrick concentrates on reining the distraction in. He still doesn’t know what he’s doing, of course, but he does his best to clear his head and hopes it works out like the other times so they can keep munching on cinnamon candies. They’re little fireworks of sugar and spice exploding in their mouths. Eventually, Jonny works up a thirst from all that sugar. He eyes the ESPN-flavored bottle like he’s looking for a surgeon general’s warning hidden somewhere on the label.

“Really fancy wine, man. I totally would’ve,” Patrick promises.

“This is good, too,” Jonny says, but there isn’t enough inflection to tell if he’s being sarcastic about the Gatorade or earnest about the night in general. He takes another sip. “I’m detecting notes of… corn?” Jonny swirls the bottle in his hand, pretending to ponder its scent. Orange street lights gleam imperiously off the cherry-flavored jewel adorning Jonny’s extended pinky. This fucking loser needs to stay forever. “With a complex aroma of red and… more red. Not tasting much ESPN in here. I think they oversold it.” 

Jonny’s throat bobs when he takes another big gulp. He does that thing where he wipes his mouth with the side of his hand in a way that somehow manages to look the opposite of sloppy, and golly, his hands are big. Jonny wrinkles his nose. “This much sugar is kinda gross, to be honest. But it’s nice, too. Takes you back.”

“Here, I’ll toss it for you.” Patrick kinda wants to steal a sip, too. He’s curious to taste ESPN, but mostly so he can make a joke about there not being enough hockey in there. He makes a grab for it, but Jonny pulls the bottle into his chest protectively.

“No.”

“You don’t even like it,” Patrick protests, confused.

“I never said that,” Jonny says, still clutching the bottle close with that inscrutable expression his face loves to make so much. He’s the weirdest human Patrick has ever known by a country mile. 

“Alright, suit yourself.”

Jonny doesn’t even drink any more of it. He wedges the plastic bottle between his thigh and side of the trunk, side-eyeing Patrick suspiciously like he’s going to try and take it. 

They crack open the Mango Electrico next and pass it between each other.

“Mmm,” Jonny drawls, with drawn-out pretension. 

“Mm,” Patrick responds. “Deceptive salinity, no?”

“For sure. What’s this bottle’s vintage, I wonder?”

“Oh I got the dustiest one they had, just for you. Possibly a ‘96.”

A skirmish breaks out then over 1996 and whether it can be considered ‘a good year.’ On the one hand, the Jets left Winnipeg. But on the correct hand, _Independence Day_. This develops into a mature, respectful trash fight, which in turn develops into a measured and cerebral wrestling match. It counts as cerebral if Patrick gets Jonny in a headlock, right? Oh, who is he trying to kid, Patrick never manages to get him in a headlock.

In fact, nobody gets anybody into a headlock because it takes all of fifteen seconds for them to end up sprawled out on the floor of the jeep with Patrick’s tongue in Jonny’s mouth. He tastes like cherry. It’s fake but it’s still sweet. 

It’s always easy to get carried away with Jonny. Almost like Patrick isn’t even calling the shots anymore, just acting on instinct. Like good hockey. It doesn’t help that the slightest touch can tease the most heartstopping sounds from Jonny’s throat, right out of the gate. Really, it’s no wonder they go from zero to Mach 3. 

In the blink of an eye, palms are under shirts and fingernails are running through hair. There isn’t anywhere they aren’t touching, like two magnets allowed to meet at last. It’s surprisingly daunting, doing this in what might as well be the middle of nowhere. Unlike in the house, it’ll be up to them to stop before things get too much for Jonny. No one’s gonna do it for them by interrupting. 

Patrick tells himself he can stop whenever, but the truth is that in this moment, he and Jonny are woven so tight that he doesn’t even know what stopping would look like. They’re matching each other push for pull, tied together in this neverending reciprocal cycle like an inhale and an exhale. Jonny pulls back to pull some air into his lungs looking like the hottest thing Patrick’s ever seen, all messed up and laser-focused on Patrick. He’s pushy and competitive and tender at the times Patrick least expects it and if Patrick doesn’t busy himself some other way quick, he’s gonna end up giving Jonny head—that isn’t a decision, just a fact. So he bends to work an illicit hickey into the soft curve of Jonny’s neck because if he’s doing that, he isn’t undoing Jonny’s fly. It’s the lesser of two goods. 

It becomes unclear whether that’s an actual improvement, since it sends Jonny bucking up into Patrick’s everything in a supremely unhelpful way that sends Patrick bucking right back. Jonny’s next involuntary thrust is so well-placed and forceful that it pushes Patrick’s stream of consciousness right out of his mouth. “Fuck I wanna get you off,” he exhales all at once. 

The way Jonny’s dark eyes flutter shut raises little objection to the idea; the way he grinds his dick up against Patrick’s, even less. “Shit,” Jonny rasps. “Oh shit.”

Patrick’s only been high twice before, and only really felt it the second time. The soft little piece of caramel looked so innocent, but the trip was something else. What Patrick remembers most is this dizzyingly raw awareness where stimuli came but never went, echoing ceaselessly into some crazy symphony. At the time, Patrick felt like he _was_ the caramel (the sentiment felt more profound at the time). His wrapper had been ripped off and now everything was sticking to him, sticking to his exposed brain. 

This feels like that. Like every wall Patrick’s ever had has been neatly unwrapped from around him and crumpled into the trash. Sensations come but they never really leave; they just overlap and bounce off one another until Patrick is one big ball of feelings. ‘Feeling’ is a vague word; maybe he means emotion, maybe sensation, maybe intuition. Right now, Patrick is a mess of all three. 

“Yeah,” Patrick agrees, ducking in to press a kiss to the mole on Jonny’s chin. Patrick sounds stupid as shit but it’s not high on his list of concerns at the moment. His brain is dizzy from a sensory overload so great that he knows he can’t just be feeling his alone. Some of these feelings must be Jonny’s.

Jonny goes tight then, not dramatically, but Patrick can still feel it the instant it happens. “What’s wrong?”

Eyes shut in concentration, Jonny chokes out, “I… probably shouldn’t. Just, playoffs and staying centered and everything.”

“Yeah no, that’s um. Smart.” Patrick scrubs a hand through his hair where it can’t get up to any mischief. “Centered.” He browbeats his body into pulling away, loathe as it is to do so. Jonny’s right. He’s right.

There’s a beat where they both breathe, not meeting each other’s eyes. Patrick’s heart is still racing and Jonny isn’t giving him anything he can use to sidetrack his hormones. Jonny has a habit of slackening his jaw to tongue his inner lip where Patrick remembers biting it earlier. He should look stupid with his mouth agape and his tongue stained red, but the fact of the matter is that Jonny looks fucking obscene and there’s nothing Patrick can do to change that. All he can do is watch and think about that tongue, that accommodating mouth and how sweet those swollen hot lips would feel around the base of Patrick’s dick. 

“You’re gonna have to distract me, here,” Patrick admits with breathless honesty. He feels like for once, he’s the one zoning and Jonny’s the one sorting him out.

There’s a hot look then, which is the fucking opposite of what he needs from Jonny, who recovers swiftly by saying, “What time is it anyway?”

At some point while Patrick and Jonny were rolling around in the back of the jeep, Patrick’s phone got kicked towards the front and Patrick has to feel around for it on his knees. “Late,” he says once he’s found it. 

He starts to push himself up and finds his hand in Jonny’s electric grip. He pulls Patrick toward the hatch so that they’re both sitting with their legs hanging over the back bumper again. Jonny’s hand doesn’t leave Patrick’s wrist entirely but curiously traces up the showy vein on Patrick’s forearm. The touch is too light—so light, so accidentally affectionate, that somebody might get the wrong idea about it. Somebody like Patrick. He has to slip his arm away back into his own custody, succumbing to a shiver.

“Don’t,” Patrick rasps under his breath. He’s not proud of it, but he can’t handle being touched like that right now. Not if he’s driving them home; he hates driving with a boner. 

Jonny isn’t off-put. Just grins wide and side-eyes Patrick through crescent moon eyes that glint like he’s won something. “And they say _I’m_ sensitive.”

“Shut up, Jonny.”

*

Going by the internal clock of the average hockey player, it’s about a quarter past naptime when Jonny calls him from New York the next day.

“Hey, can you do me a favor? I’m missing something and I wanna make sure I didn’t leave it at the house before I tear apart my hotel room looking for it.”

“Shoot,” Patrick agrees easily.

“It’s my little black notebook. It’d be on the desk if it’s there at all.”

“Hang on,” Patrick says and walks the phone upstairs to duck his head into the bedroom. “Yup, right there on the desk. No search party necessary.”

“Oh good,” Jonny exhales. “Well that saved me a few hours. I’ll see you when I get back, right? You’ll be around?”

“Yeah, I’m in town. Thought you’d be busy with blind dates, you stud.” He remembers overhearing Jonny’s mom talk about the promising, er, prospect pool of guides for Jonny last night. 

So it’s kind of a lie when Jonny laughs and tells him, “Nah. No suitors at the moment.”

Patrick doesn’t call him on it because, selfishly, he doesn’t want Jonny going off on blind dates all over town. The minute Jonny finds his guide, this thing between him and Patrick ends. Patrick wonders if that’s on Jonny’s mind as well. According to Jonny’s mom, he’s been ducking set-ups since playoffs started, but the timing also lines up with when they started hooking up and Patrick can’t say for sure that that’s a coincidence. It wouldn’t be so terrible for Patrick to root for Jonny putting the dates off for now, would it? At least until Patrick is drafted and shipped away? Selfish, yes. Short-sighted, maybe. But surely not _terrible_.

After they hang up, Patrick spends an impressive two hours pretending he doesn’t care what’s inside that pad of paper. He goes in for a session with his personal trainer like an adult. He stops by the bank to withdraw cash like an adult. He bypasses the bedroom and showers like an adult. Of course, when he notices that Jonny left some laundry in the bathroom, Patrick has to return it to the bedroom, like an adult. 

Patrick leers at the little notebook. The little notebook leers back. He has not grown up _at all._

Patrick dons his winter gloves, but as he’s approaching the book with sinister gloved hands poised aloft, he still feels underequipped. So he pops out to the kitchen, snags two butter knives from the silverware drawer, and carefully uses them to slide between the pages and flip the spiral-bound book open. Bond. James Bond.

The beat-up little pocket pad coughs up a couple pieces of folded printer paper that were tucked under its cover. Patrick fits the point of his tongue into the corner of his mouth and sets himself to this new exhibit with great care. It takes some doing, unfolding the paper. He’s still committed to using his tools like a spy (or maybe just like a tool). Patrick gets the job done as quickly as a man wielding dual butter knives could, using the broad side of one of the knives to spread the paper flat. But for all that trouble, it’s only a printout of the Sabres schedule in calendar format. January, February, March, April, and May lie before Patrick in compact little squares. The second printout shows only April; the Round 1 schedule. The third page, more recent and less battered, displays the Round 2 schedule, including Games 5-7 should they be required. 

All but May are marked up with notes in some kind of shorthand, mostly numbers. Today sticks at the end of April, colored pale blue like all the days of away games. Home game dates glow yellow and the rest are left white. Nearly every single day, game day or not, has been assigned a number with dogged regularity, right up until yesterday. It wasn’t all done at once; the ink changes often and it’s clear from the condition of the paper that it’s been folded and unfolded many, many times in multiple different ways. It looks more like an art project than an agenda. This is clearly the calendar of someone deranged.

Yesterday is labeled _7.5_ in blunt pencil. The day before, _8._ The day before that, _8_ again.

The numbers don’t exceed ten, Patrick realizes as he reads backwards up the calendar. It’s hard to keep from touching the page as he pores over it. He’s gonna Nicolas Cage the shit out of this. January to February, the numbers hover around four or lower. March and April have higher highs and lower lows. April’s yellow dates are invariably seven and higher. Its white dates vary wildly, noticeably low when they precede a blue date. Its blue dates don’t crack five, steadily declining over the course of the month until the most recent away game, last week. Game 4, the last away game against the Islanders. In tiny pencil, it reads “ _no sleep._ ”

That solves the puzzle so cleanly that Patrick purses his lips moodily, peeved by the anticlimax. But it also makes the _2_ ’s, _1_ ’s, and underlined _0_ ’s much more concerning. One of the _1_ ’s is from just last week. One hour of sleep? He thought Jonny had been doing better.

He leaves the room feeling unsettled in more ways than one. Yeah, he’d been expecting a diary or shitty song lyrics, but reading the numerical record he found instead feels weirdly more invasive. Hell, maybe there were still diary entries or embarrassing doodles inside the notebook, but Patrick’s appetite for snooping has soured. 

Patrick means to ask Jonny about his sleep when he returns from New York. He really means to. But then Jonny comes through the door half past midnight, on the heels of a big win to go up 3-1 in the series. Yeah, Jonny looks exhausted, leaning on the banister to slip his dress shoes off, but he looks so happy, too. 

“Hey! When did you get in? I didn’t hear—”

Jonny’s already on him. Reunions like this are becoming kind of a problem for them. Jonny tastes like spearmint, the gum he chews on plane rides to help with his nose. 

“Sorry,” Jonny mutters between kisses. Patrick lets it deepen.

He hears a digital sound, then an odd dull one and pulls back in time to spy Jonny’s arm returning to clutch at Patrick’s side. “Did you just—”

“Get back here,” Jonny interrupts him, pulling Patrick back in with a firm hand on his neck. 

Hazy in the background of this borderline cruel physical chemistry between them, Patrick feels hot all over that Jonny didn’t think twice about tossing his phone across the room—right into the fucking wall, Patrick’s pretty sure—just for this. Just for one of these stolen moments, so hard to come by. Patrick tells himself it’s supply and demand that makes this so good. Jonny laughs into one of their kisses when Patrick accidentally grazes a ticklish spot near his inner elbow and the sight and sound of it is so beautiful that Patrick has to pull Jonny physically on top of him. He’s getting that feeling again, the one where invisible strings pull on his brain in the strangest, most pleasant way. It’s like being caught in a web of hot silk. But Patrick doesn’t struggle. He insinuates himself further.

There’s a whoosh of fresh air rushing in to fill the space between their bodies when Jonny separates them without explanation. Patrick blinks up at him dumbly.

“Need to go put my bag away,” Jonny says, throaty and a little rushed, and it hits Patrick that Jonny went straight from the airport to Patrick’s arms without any pit stops. 

The stopping on a dime thing he can handle—it’s a trial, but Patrick doesn’t hold it against Jonny. But little unconscious gestures like this are another story. It almost makes Patrick angry, this shit Jonny does that makes it so hard for Patrick to keep their boundaries straight. When the door shuts upstairs, Patrick falls onto his back with an enormous sigh and lays there on the bed willing his boner down, pretending it’s his biggest problem.

Enough time passes that Patrick starts to wonder whether Jonny’s coming back downstairs or what. He can hear Jonny still moving around up there, he can the telltale squeak of floorboards or, no, actually, it’s the bedframe quietly—

The realization of what Jonny is doing floods Patrick’s body like hot coffee. He flushes, heart pounding. The basement feels instantly smaller—the whole house does. It feels like there isn’t even a ceiling and a floor between them. It’s scant feet that separate Patrick from Jonny, just one floor up getting himself off.

Well, shit, if Patrick had known he was allowed to do that, he wouldn’t have spent the past fifteen minutes with his hands behind his head like an asshole. It’s probably his imagination, but Patrick is convinced he hears Jonny sigh upstairs—or, not a sigh, actually more of a moan. It sounds defeated, like a ‘you win’ directed at god knows who. The exact sound Patrick has dreamt about wrenching out of Jonny since before Patrick could even tolerate the guy, in nearly the exact context he’d fantasized. That seals it.

The relief when Patrick finally gets a hand on himself is enough to make his head loll over onto the pillow, his cheeks red hot against the cool linens. It’s just… too much to handle, the idea that he could get Jonny this worked up. The idea that Jonny’s up there thinking of Patrick. It wasn’t too long ago that Patrick was sat in front of a Sabres game, tugging himself off imagining this exact situation. Right now is headier than that time because it’s real but more bittersweet because this is as close as they can get. 

Bittersweet because, now that Patrick knows the actual sensation of Jonny’s hands on him, he feels robbed of it. Robbed of seeing him, too. Jonny must be moving so carefully, what with his sensitivity. Or is he so practiced at this that his hands are confident and sure? Patrick is obsessed with those pretty hands; he wishes he could see it. His own movements escalate in spite of his frustration and somehow he feels certain that Jonny is getting close, too. So close and yet so far. Hand blurring on his dick, Patrick makes small, broken noises. The noises aren’t broken; he is.

Afterward, it’s quiet. Jonny sneaks down into the basement and lies next to him in the dark. They don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about how this is the most they can have.

Eventually, Jonny breaks the silence with a sleep-thickened voice. “Can we move upstairs? Smells like wet socks and freezer burn down here.”

Patrick sniffs the air himself, but it fails to make an impression. Standing is going to require finding his legs, and that’s a whole thing. “Whereas my room probably smells like old skates and Coke stains.”

“I like it,” Jonny mumbles, equal parts loyal and defensive. 

There’s a compliment in there somewhere, so Patrick groans and hotdog-rolls himself to the edge of the pullout mattress. “C’mon, big guy,” he offers Jonny a hand up. Mostly he just wants to make sure Jonny gets some shuteye. That notebook has been haunting Patrick all week. Sometimes he sees the scrawled zeroes when he closes his eyes. It’s to the point where it’s interfering with Patrick’s own sleep, but that’s a secondary concern. First and foremost is getting rid of this feeling like he’s just waiting for the ax to fall.

Upstairs, he tucks himself close to Jonny, not even pretending it’s because of the narrow bed frame. They’ll end up this way anyways and Jonny always seems to sleep like a log when they do. That’s more important than Patrick’s tenuous-at-best grip on dignity. He’s resolved to help Jonny get through this, however much Patrick can. 

He’s just not sure how much that is, exactly.

*

There are twelve minutes left in the first period. The score is tied at zero, but not for long and everyone in the building knows it.

Arena atmosphere is always different during the playoffs, volatile and catching. The ripple of cause and effect through the crowd of thousands all feeding on each other’s energy is something you’d see if you put a colony of unicellular organisms under a microscope. Like moss, if moss were exciting. Everything is dialed up, everyone in the building is a sentinel and a guide for the night. Because nepotism is awesome, Patrick’s family has box seats—a perfect aerial view of the thrumming crowd.

Between one unremarkable second and the next, the energy in HSBC Arena takes a turn in that subtle but pervasive way that only happens when you’re in a huge throng of people. Patrick doesn’t get it; the Rangers didn’t score, play isn’t even stopped. 

Their box is opposite the benches. Even at this distance, it’s easy for Patrick to pick his dad out of the bunch, hunched as he is to point something on his whiteboard out to Briere. Jonny’s never hard to spot either. He’s. Patrick squints.

He’s heading for the locker room. Jonny’s heading for the locker room with twelve minutes left in the first period. 

The entire arena feels unsettlingly quiet as Patrick watches the number 19 on Jonny’s back fade from view, but that might just be Patrick. 

It isn’t even a thought. One minute Jonny is in the game and the next he’s not and Patrick is up and looking for the quickest route out of the box. He didn’t see Jonny get hit or take a spill. And if it isn’t that—

“Bathroom,” Patrick says to his mom, ignoring Erica’s face as he squeezes past her to get to the aisle. Not important right now. It’s a blur then, just _let me get down there I can help let me help just let me down._

Patrick abuses his family connections to get past security to the locker room because he can feel that something is seriously off. That crazy feeling that he can _help,_ that he _has_ to help has taken the reins. By the time he makes it downstairs into the arena’s basement, Patrick’s surroundings are eerily quiet compared to just a minute ago. Down the little hallway between the dressing room and the locker room, Patrick can hear Jonny giving one of the spotters a hard time. Patrick reaches the doorway to find that they’re already leaving the exam room. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

“... done yet?” Jonny is saying. “I have a game to get back to.”

“Oh good,” the guide doesn’t bat an eye as he steers Jonny straight through the locker room and back to the dressing room. One of his hands is on Jonny’s shoulder and the other is on his clipboard. “Because my next question was do you have a game to get back to.”

They go right past Patrick on their way. It’s the first time he can remember Jonny ever failing to notice him and the realization makes Patrick uneasy. Whatever is going on in Jonny’s head must be intense. Instead of the haywire feeling of overstimulation he’s felt from Jonny in the past, Patrick just feels an eerie blankness. If Jonny’s mental state at the WJC was a thunderstorm, this is a fog. The drumbeat in Patrick’s chest of _let me get down there I can help let me help I can make it better_ has gone quiet.

“Now, those sleeping pills. Which dosage have you been taking?”

It’s suddenly and starkly apparent that Patrick’s presence here is grossly intrusive. The out-of-place feeling makes his skin prickle, nearly a nervous sweat. This isn’t his place. Why had he come down here? What kind of help did Patrick think he was going to be? It’s clear to Patrick that the spotter is getting Jonny ready to leave the arena (though Jonny apparently has yet to catch on), so he gets a move on getting out of there first. Patrick doesn’t belong down here.

Jonny doesn’t come home that night. Patrick thought he might be in his room waiting for them when the Kanes got back from the game.

“He’s staying the night at Justine Lesnik’s,” his dad says when he passes Patrick on his way to the kitchen.

“And that’s gonna help?”

“I don’t know.” His dad snags a tumbler from the top shelf and plunks a single ice cube inside. It isn’t like his dad to drink scotch after a loss. 

Hopefully a professional guide can straighten Jonny out. He thinks Patrick hasn’t noticed, but Patrick can tell that Jonny isn’t getting good sleep recently even when he’s at home. Patrick could feel the frustration rolling off him at 2 AM last night, though Jonny was absolutely still next to him.

“I can’t say I understand most of that stuff, obviously,” his dad says with a dismissive hand gesture, “but it sounds like a therapist like her is just a temporary fix.” 

It’s like listening to a recording of Patrick’s own voice, the way his dad pronounces ‘that stuff.’ Patrick has probably said that exact sentence half a dozen times before. And just like hearing your own voice, it’s an oddly disturbing experience. Patrick has to take a moment to look back and wonder if Patrick himself sounds so dismissive when he talks about sentinel life and his ignorance thereof. He has to wonder why he’s always been so ignorant to begin with. Almost staunchly ignorant. 

“I don’t know what we’re gonna do,” Patrick’s dad says with that off the cuff brand of honesty that comes from exhaustion. He scrubs a hand over his bald head, then down to pinch the wide bridge of his nose. “But the short-term solutions aren’t cutting it. Doc says he needs to finalize a bond. Fast. Kid can’t keep on like this.”

It takes a second for Patrick’s dad to notice that his son has gone very still. He winces, “Forget I said any of that, Buzz. That’s his private medical business, I’m just,” a beleaguered sigh, “I’m just batting a thousand tonight. Mom asks, I’m in the study.” 

Patrick says goodnight and watches his dad amble off to review gametape.

*

Patrick’s dad and Jonny arrive home from their series win over the Rangers while Patrick is out on a run.

Right as Patrick is coming into the kitchen, winded and a little sweaty, Jonny is shielding his face, yelling, “MY EYES!”

Patrick spends a moment frozen in panic. Then he’s at Jonny’s side, “What’s wrong?! What—”

It takes a second of Jonny covering his face, looking away from Patrick’s neon green sneakers for Patrick to get the burn. HAR HAR, fuck you. “Asshole,” Patrick breathes, not even remotely talking about his shoes. In the heat of the moment, Patrick was so worried he forgot that Jonny doesn’t even have sensitive eyes. 

From the way Jonny is acting, smiling and joking while he slices vegetables for dinner and swings his legs back and forth, you’d think that nothing was wrong. That he wasn’t blatantly hiding shit from Patrick, like Patrick can’t see the sleep deprivation on his face. After encouraging Jonny to indulge himself more, to be more cavalier, and then feeling so self-satisfied each shining moment that Jonny did, Patrick can’t help but wonder if he wasn’t too successful in his efforts to get Jonny to loosen up more. Is Patrick supposed to be lighthearted about this now? To pretend that just because Jonny’s still cleared for play, there’s nothing to worry about? He struggles as Jonny continues to be charming, recapping the game and the series and the general failings of people from the state of New York. 

Jonny frowns. “Are you okay?”

There’s a difference, Patrick thinks, between being sensitive and being observant. It’s just his luck that Jonny would be both. 

“Sure,” Patrick says, for lack of a better answer. 

Later, they’re curled up for the night in the basement, earlier than usual because Patrick is exhausted from being worried and confused while Jonny is just exhausted from being exhausted. One of the lights on the other end of the basement is still on because neither of them wanted to get up and fix it. Patrick sleepily clings to one of Jonny’s arms and wishes he didn’t feel like Leonardo DiCaprio holding on to Kate Winslet. Something by one of his hands buzzes. 

Jonny groans and gropes around for his phone.

“Whozit?” Patrick murmurs after a minute.

“Mom,” Jonny says, tossing the phone away. “Still trying to set up these guide dates for me.”

“You’re going, right?” Patrick hasn’t said anything to Jonny about his sleeping, about what the team doctor said about a bond, or about anything Patrick’s not supposed to know. But now more than ever, Patrick appreciates what’s at stake here should Jonny give up on finding a bond. Not just someone who can guide him like Patrick, but someone who’s capable of forming an actual permanent connection with him. Someone who can make Jonny stronger and safer for years to come.

Jonny stares at him.

“I know they’re weird, but you should go.” Patrick attempts to swallow his more selfish emotions without choking. “You’ve gotta take care of yourself, Jonny.”

Jonny’s got a pinched look on his face. The one Patrick’s begun to regard as a ‘buffering’ sign. “I just thought…” Jonny trails off, biting his cheek like he hadn’t meant to open his mouth.

Fondness and concern escape Patrick’s chest in a heavy sigh. Patrick thought it was all working itself out, too. That maybe Jonny would be okay without having to subject himself to a theatrical hunt for a partner. He understands Jonny’s frustration. The selfish part of Patrick wants this to happen even less than Jonny does. Patrick hates hates _hates_ the idea of it, but Jonny burning out like a flash in a pan is even worse.

“I know you did,” Patrick murmurs in a way that’s hopefully comforting. He swallows past the lump in his throat. “And you’ve done crazy well on your own. But you can’t keep flying solo, Jonny. You’ve gotta keep looking.”

“That’s not what I—I just thought it could wait till—whatever,” Jonny squints his eyes shut, looking so tired. “You’re right. I have to keep looking.”

*

“You guys will bounce back next game, for sure.” Patrick isn’t certain what Jonny wants to hear from him. It’s unusual for him to call Patrick after a game. They’ve been on the line for five minutes and Jonny has yet to present any particular reason for the call, so Patrick figures he’s feeling torn up about his performance against the Sens.

Jonny’s exhale rushes against the receiver. “I just hate being streaky. It’s frustrating when I know I could be so much better.”

“What, like with the mental stuff?” 

No response.

“You and I both know you’re doing everything you can, Jonny. There’s no need to beat yourself up when you’ve never met a compatible guide.”

“Actually,” Jonny cuts in, voice sliding around pitchily then pausing like he has to work to get his next words out. “That’s not true.”

It’s only a second. The pause is only a second, but hockey has taught Patrick that a lot can happen in one second. That’s all the time it takes for a hope to bloom in his chest, as gentle and safe as a house on fire. 

Actually what? Actually who? Actually Patrick? He holds his breath.

“That’s why I called,” Jonny says. “I met someone.”

*

There’s not much time left before the combine and every single day counts. Every part of Patrick’s day is accounted for.

If things were different, maybe the combine wouldn’t be so critical. If Patrick had performed like he should have in the OHL playoffs. If he could have gotten London more than a single playoff win, then maybe he’d feel more secure. Maybe he would know for sure what Chicago was thinking, where they were leaning. But he didn’t and he doesn’t, so it’s all going to come down to the combine. Unless Chicago has made promises to Kyle Turris that Patrick doesn’t know about. And really, it isn’t just Turris Patrick is keeping an eye on. JVR is right up there with them. Voracek and Cherepanov. Gags, too.

Patrick and Gags are texting almost constantly, egging each other on. Nothing would make Patrick happier than to go one-and-two overall with Gags. The culmination of a whole year working their asses off together. They’ve made it this far; it’s the final stretch now. The combine and then the draft mere weeks afterwards. Patrick is just pedalling and pedalling and pedalling to get there.

His sweat drips down onto one of the handlebars. It doesn’t look like he’s getting anywhere, just pedalling by himself in the basement, but he keeps telling himself he’s getting close. So close, now. Just keep on pedalling.

… He’s a pre-law student at UOttawa. 

Patrick takes a desperate pull from his water bottle, then squirts some of the freezing water over his face hoping it will shock his brain into a restart. He makes it another mile on the stationary bike before dismounting. Then drops to the floor to start another set of sit-ups. He counts out every fifth sit-up and makes himself name someone who wore that jersey number. By the time he reaches Dominik Hasek, he knows he ought to give it a rest. Patrick rolls onto his aching side and stares at the legs of the couch until a bead of sweat falls into his eye and he has to blink.

… The matchmaking service set them up. One of several guide lunch dates arranged amidst the Sabres’ away games in Ottawa. 

He has some phone interviews in the morning, so Patrick scrapes himself off the floor and ambles upstairs to shower. If, after all that crazy cardio, he wasn’t able to fall asleep, that would say something pretty fucked up about his mental state. Patrick takes a Benadryl at half-past nine so he doesn’t have to find out. “Someone call the cops on this pity party,” Patrick gripes in the empty dark, digging the heels of his hands into his eyeballs, fed-up with himself. “Nothing’s even _different_. It was gonna end in June anyways.”

He leaves for Toronto in three days. Patrick meets with his trainer and they go over the dexterity drills he’ll see at the combine. His trainer frowns. Patrick’s normally better on the balance board. He keeps overcompensating.

… Patrick didn’t realize the service was also matching him up with dude guides. Not that that’s surprising or that it has to be a romantic thing. He just. Didn’t realize.

“Mom, how come we never did more guide training?”

“Mm?” She glances up from the bills she’s sorting on the kitchen table. 

“Guide training. I was just thinking it’s kind of odd how I never did the after school stuff or the checkups or. Anything, really.” He’d never given it much thought until recently, but then that was sort of the whole issue.

She uncaps a pen and starts signing papers with practiced speed. “You were playing on half a dozen teams at the time, if you remember. We could hardly do everything.”

“I guess.”

“Besides, you never seemed interested.” She’s right. Patrick knows she’s right. But at the time, he also never really understood what was happening. It was like his parents had found out that he could curl his tongue; ‘Oh that’s neat,’ and then it was right back to hockey. Patrick figured it wasn’t important.

“I guess.”

Patrick listens to Game 2 against Ottawa on his headphones while he jogs around the neighborhood. They lose. Back home, he ducks into Jonny’s bedroom and looks through his stacks of books for something entry level. He grabs a couple about sentinels and bonds that don’t appear too intimidating and kidnaps them downstairs.

Once he starts reading, it’s kind of cool, the little shit in his life that starts to make sense. Small random things, like why he never picked up on Mr. and Mrs. Wilson’s deal. Patrick can’t bring himself to take use the word ‘aura’ seriously, but that’s how the book describes the baseline feeling a guide will get from a sentinel. And apparently it’s super normal not to notice those feelings from a bonded one. To paraphrase the book, if Patrick understands right, for a large subset of guides, you can’t pick up what a bonded sentinel’s throwing down unless you’re the one they’re bonded to. So at least it’s not just that Patrick’s guide muscles are weak little shits. The book includes a cheat sheet to help any bystander recognize a bonded pair: communication quirks, mirroring. A lot of the signs are familiar to Patrick after living with the Wilsons. It’s funny and unexpected, but living with the Wilsons ended up being almost as educational as billeting with Pat Verbeek.

Patrick gets sucked into reading until he hits the third chapter where it really gets into bonding. Apparently, bonds can snap into place pretty quickly once people make up their minds. It’s not uncommon to see a bond minted within a week’s time.

… Jonny’s bonding with him. They already talked about it. Patrick’s mom told him. Management is thrilled.

Sliding an old receipt between the pages as a bookmark, Patrick sets the book aside. It’s late. Upstairs, he can hear the automated garage door opening. His dad is back from Ottawa. Jonny isn’t with him. He’ll be staying at Justine’s for the next stretch of games. As a precaution. Maybe his guide came with him. Jonny won’t be using the bedroom upstairs, but Patrick doesn’t stay in there, either. A month ago, Patrick pictured that room as a time capsule. Now, even in the dark, he can sense where time has changed it; the blank spaces where memorabilia used to be, the unexpected addition of potted plants on the window sill, the sun-faded curtains and worn corners of the carpet. Most of the framed pictures and newspaper clippings remain on the wall opposite the bed, but the mirror in the middle of it all has changed. Perhaps nothing about it is actually different, but it looks nothing like Patrick remembers. He sloughs it off. It’s inevitable. This space isn’t his anymore.

No one ever warned Patrick that being ready to move on from home would feel even weirder than the alternative. Of course, there’s a part of Patrick that still wants to stay in Buffalo, but it’s because of Jonny. How cruel. What was once upon a time the biggest intrusion on his home is now the only reason Patrick wants to stay. Not that it matters. 

Patrick returns the book to Jonny’s room without finishing it. He avoided looking around the room too much when he was picking out something to read, but this time Patrick lets his eyes wander a little. The plants in the windows are pouting about Jonny’s absence. He told Patrick that they improve the air quality around them which is neat, so Patrick forages for one of Jonny’s omnipresent mostly-empty water bottles to water the plants with. He finds two amongst the requisite socks on the floor, another one peeking out of a duffel bag, and one half-hidden on the desk. Its orange bottle cap catches Patrick’s eye. The bottle is inconspicuously serving as a divider between a row of manila folders and Jonny’s DVD collection, barely visible between them. To anyone else, it would look like an unremarkable case of frat boy interior decorating, but the label says _ESPN the Flavor_ and Patrick has to leave the room. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

… Apparently he’s from Kitchener. He speaks French.

“What would you describe as your biggest weakness?”

A big part of the combine—arguably the biggest part—is the interview part where you sit down individually with any NHL team that wants to meet you. Patrick won’t know his schedule until he arrives in Toronto for the event itself, but he knows he’s going to have a fair amount of those meetings. He hesitates when Erica offers to fake interview him so he can practice. 

“I see. And if you had a genie offer to grant you three wishes?”

Three weeks ago, Patrick would’ve sooner given Erica his car than an opening like this, but she ends up being surprisingly restrained with her questions. When they do stray outside the realm of what Patrick is likely to be asked by a team’s GM or scouts, they don’t veer into Jonny territory and that’s good enough for him. 

“Say ‘world peace,’ next time. They like it when you say ‘world peace.’”

“This isn’t a beauty pageant.”

“ _I’ll say._ Please rank your sisters for us, best to worst.”

“They’re all the worst.”

“Do you favor a one state or two state solution for Israel and Palestine?”

“Erica.”

Erica adjusts her imaginary pair of glasses. “Just making sure you aren’t spacing out again.” She goes back to slogging down the list of practice questions. “Would you rather be on a team that…”

… It’s worse that it’s a guy. Why is it worse that it’s a guy? 

“Patrick?”

He shakes it off. It doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. All Patrick wants is to be picked first.

But first, Patrick needs to make an impromptu trip to HSBC Arena. There’s something he’s been putting off. His dad looks understandably surprised when Patrick pops his head through his office door. It’s before 10 AM.

“Got a minute?” 

Once inside, Patrick levels with his dad across his desk. “About an agent,” he starts. “I understand where you’ve been coming from, but I’ve decided to go unrepresented. I’m in a decent position right now and it’s important to me to do this for myself. I know we disagree on it, but I’m okay with that. After the draft, I’ll hear offers and get someone to help me with all the contract stuff. But I can get there myself, and I feel really good about it. I thought I should tell you that.”

After a long beat, his dad leans back in his office chair. “Well,” he says. “It sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”

Patrick nods.

It looks like that’s all he’s going to get, but then his dad says, “Good.” His face takes on a conflicted grin like he’s smiling in spite of himself. “It’s not what I would do, but I’m proud of you.”

His eyes take on that shine and, oh no. “Dad, don’t cry.”

“I’m not,” says his dad’s mouth. I am, says his dad’s eyes. 

“Dad.” Damn these weepy genes. “Dad, c’mon.”

“Oh, go on,” his dad shoos him. “Don’t you have some weights to be lifting?”

He’s gained, Patrick is relieved to find atop the scale in the basement. No part of it was easy, but he got there. His appetite is a flaky friend, but if Patrick skips a shake, Turris wins. The mantra doesn’t make him laugh like it used to, but it still makes him drink his protein shakes so that’s fine. 

… Did Jonny bring him to town for Game 5? Are they staying at Justine’s together? Getting to know each other at her kitchen counter over coffee and tea?

Patrick is exhausted and confused and a little sad, but most importantly, he’s close. He’s so close to what he’s been working towards his whole life. Hell, maybe that’s how Jonny feels about finally finding his guide. It’s been many weeks since Patrick’s last basement confessional. Jonny isn’t even upstairs, but that doesn’t stop Patrick from lying back and telling the ceiling, “I’m glad you found what you were looking for,” even though it’s hard to do.

*

He’s leaving straight from Game 3 to Toronto, but Patrick has to wait to see his dad and say goodbye before he can hit the road. His dad is going to call him literally every day of the combine to mine every little detail about it, but Patrick knows he’ll still get shirty if Patrick doesn’t see him before he goes. Patrick was hoping to get on the road as early as possible, so of course the game goes to double overtime.

Jonny is having an incredible game in Buffalo tonight, light years ahead of the level he was playing at during those first two losses in Ottawa. They must have already bonded, then. No time to waste. They’re all witnessing what Jonny plays like with a real bond, with a real guide. Did Jonny bring him to the game? Where is he sitting?

One overtime period of watching Jonny play lights-out is all Patrick can take. It’s unprecedented for Patrick as a lifelong Sabres fan, but he can’t watch. Not because he’s nervous, not because it’s the Eastern Conference Finals, but because he’s heartsick. Over the course of the playoffs, it’s been hard enough to watch Jonny play through Patrick’s deafening inner monologue of ‘Why can’t I be out there with you if I could just be out there with you we could set this whole thing on fire we could leave them all in the dust _why not._ ’ Now he still can’t play with Jonny, and watching him thrive because of… not Patrick… is too much. So as the fourth intermission of this hellish game comes to an end, Patrick heads down to wait for his dad in the hallway outside the locker room. 

The hallway is dead. Everyone in the building is watching the ice and these tunnels are the only part of the building not littered with flat screens. Hell, even the bathrooms have the play-by-play running over the speakers. It’s eerie, the sudden quiet and the distant roar. Patrick texts his dad to meet him in the hallway whenever the game ends ( _if_ ever the game ends) and waits with his back against the painted cinder blocks.

Patrick shuts his eyes, shuts out the muffled sounds of chaos. He wasn’t expecting to feel so torn up about this situation. He breathes slowly, in and out, and starts to read the ingredients list on his tube of chapstick so that he isn’t just counting the seconds as they pass by. He’d text Gags to distract himself but his phone’s battery is getting low and he needs to save power for the road trip ahead of him.

A little over five minutes into the second overtime period, the crowd goes quiet and then it explodes. Sounds like the Sabres brought it home. Good.

The noise leaks into the home locker room as the team leaves the ice. Patrick can hear Lindy Ruff giving a spur-of-the-moment speech over the din of his rambunctious team. Rambunctious, but tired. The head coach keeps it brief. Patrick stretches his shoulders and stays propped against the wall; he knows he’s got another good five minutes until his dad even thinks about checking his phone.

The door to the dressing room pops open then, but it isn’t the PR guy or Patrick’s dad. 

Jonny is huge in his gear, wearing everything but his helmet. His forehead is flushed. That’s as much of him as Patrick can process in the scant milliseconds before Jonny is in his face and inhibiting all of Patrick’s brain functions.

“I need you to tell me no,” Jonny gasps.

There’s no preamble, and he doesn’t seem to have the time or patience for elaboration, either. He just looks at Patrick expectantly, breaths still coming hard from being on the ice in 2OT not fifteen minutes ago. Jesus, he hasn’t even taken his skates off. 

And what’s this Jonny is saying? Patrick shakes himself. “What?” he asks blankly. Say no to what? Jonny hasn’t spoken to him in a week.

“I need you to—”

“Tazer!” It’s the Sabres’ media relations guy rounding the corner. “You’re on tonight, bud. And don’t scowl, it’s your own fault for tearing it up out there.”

While he’s talking, Patrick notes with relief that Jonny doesn’t feel scary blank to Patrick like he had in the locker room that horrible night weeks ago. Good. At least that’s better. He’ll be more stable now, of course, with a bond. It makes sense that he would feel more stable to Patrick except. Except Patrick shouldn’t be able to feel him at all? Is Jonny… not bonded?

“Sounds good,” Jonny is saying to the guy in the Sabres jacket, without once taking his eyes off Patrick. There’s nothing in Jonny’s response or tone to indicate that he was actually listening to a word that was said, but the media relations guy is apparently satisfied and heads for the locker room.

Jonny’s unflinching stare is so hard that Patrick feels his body instinctively press itself back against the wall, heedless of the fact that there’s nowhere for him to go. Jaw flexing, Jonny says, “I—”

“Buzz!” Patrick’s dad booms. He pops out of the door to the locker room just after the media relations guy popped in and ambles up behind Jonny, cheeks rosy. “Got your text. What a win! You see that?”

“Uh,” Patrick says.

“Tazer, doc’s looking for you,” says Patrick’s dad. “He wants a check-in before your media scrum—and don’t think you’re weaseling out of a scrum.” He elbows Jonny with pride. “Helluva game!”

Jonny hasn’t broken eye contact with Patrick this whole time, but now he shuts his eyes looking… Patrick doesn’t know how to read him at all right now. “Thanks, Coach,” Jonny says.

“Who got the game-winner?” Patrick asks.

His dad says, “Campbell,” at the same time Jonny says, “You didn’t watch?” voice still low and serious.

“Wish our boy luck, Tazer! He’s got a big week ahead of him,” his dad says, putting an arm around Patrick’s shoulders and shaking him with fatherly playfulness. “He’s grown, hasn’t he?”

“Uh,” Jonny says. He still has sweat running down his neck and under his jersey. 

This is… yeah, this is awkward.

As if in response to Patrick’s lament, the team doctor emerges from the double doors next and tsks at Jonny. The team physician is all dark circles and impatient energy; Patrick imagines he can smell the coffee in the man’s sweat from all the way across the hall. The doctor catches Jonny’s eye and jerks his head back in the direction of the locker room in a way that brooks no argument. “Right after team meeting, we said. Come on.”

The hallway is filling up now with personnel and journalists. Patrick gets bumped into by some apologetic intern and by the time Patrick has turned back around, Jonny’s number 19 is disappearing into the locker room.


	6. Chapter 6

The east ballroom of the Toronto Park Plaza Hotel looks like it’s hosting a convention for hairdressers’ ‘Before’ photos. Central Scouting has a breakfast spread laid out for them. The NCAA kids won’t arrive until tomorrow, so there’s roughly eighty prospects filling the room with noise and a physical cloud of body spray—it’s possible that it seems worse to Patrick since he switched to more mildly scented products months ago, but in his head, the smell hangs over the room like city smog. While the director of Central Scouting gives a welcome address, they all shift in their seats, sizing each other up. 

The pomp and drama of the 2007 NHL Scouting Combine Prospect Breakfast and Opening Remarks sort of falls flat when the very first item on Patrick’s agenda after is spending what feels like ages in a computer chair filling out mental assessments. It’s like sitting for the SATs, only with questions like, _‘Would you rather be the top performer on a middling team or a fourth liner for a contender?’_ The question makes Patrick sneak a glance at Carter MacLean, one row ahead of him. They’ve crossed paths in the hotel a couple times already, enough to confirm that things between them are going to be as frosty as TJ Brennan’s tips.

The medical evals are next, and the staff is running a little behind schedule. The European skaters already had theirs yesterday, so the backlog isn’t too bad. Prospects sit in chairs lining the hotel hallway, split into alphabetical subgroups. Lucky Patrick, repping the H-N. He’s chatting with a Sarnia Sting player next to him, but it’s hard to ignore Carter, half a dozen chairs down, talking shit as always and making little to no effort to avoid being overheard. 

“I mean, good for them,” Carter is saying. “But don’t act like you’re above everyone else, y’know? I know guys who don’t have time for you if you slide out of the top twenty.”

Patrick snorts at that. Whatever helps Carter sleep at night. One of the doctors pokes his head out into the hallway. “Kane,” he calls.

After his medical examination, they send him in to have his player photo taken. It’s an uneventful experience other than watching Logan Couture step in front of the camera still wearing his puka necklace over his league-issued mockneck like it’s religious garb. What a magical thing to behold. (Will Couture wear it to the draft, Patrick has to wonder? His fingers itch to text Jonny about it, but.) Finally, before he can say he’s done for the day, Patrick has to check in with Central Scouting to make sure there aren’t any changes to his schedule. Just looking at the overstuffed timetables makes him want to take a nap. One day down.

It would be too much to ask for the elevator to be empty on Patrick’s way back up to his room.

After brief eye contact, Patrick shuffles in and presses the button for the twelfth floor. “Hey, Mack.”

“Oh, you know my name. Me, only thirtieth for the ISS. What a fucking honor.” Carter’s slouched against the back corner of the elevator, carefully posed like he thinks his picture is about to be taken.

Patrick rolls his eyes. “I don’t give a shit what you’re ranked, dude. I don’t like your _attitude._ So you can hit me up when you grow out of that.”

As fate would have it, the elevator stops then to pick up another passenger from the third floor. It’s a big blonde Swede wearing the same grey t-shirt as the rest of the prospects, and Patrick breaks out into a wide grin. 

“Hey, Olsson, right? Patrick Kane, nice to meet you.” 

They shake hands, Olsson somewhat bemused. “Team USA?”

Patrick nods. “You were fucking tough to get past at World Juniors. So impressive. You doing interviews?” He’s not sweaty enough to be coming out of fitness testing.

Olsson nods. “Detroit.”

When Patrick and Olsson both exit on the twelfth floor, Patrick is still picking his brain about the interview process. Olsson says he’s worried about the language gap but he speaks English better than Patrick does. Patrick doesn’t waste energy looking over his shoulder as they go.

That night, Gags’ parents invite Patrick out to dinner with them. They’re staying at a nearby hotel for the duration of the event. Obviously, Patrick’s own dad is tied up with playoffs, but his mom is coming on Day 3 of the combine, the day his team interviews start, and staying for a few nights. Patrick jumps at the chance to get out of the hotel for a bit; it’s starting to feel a little claustrophobic. He struggled living with two hockey players under one roof, and this hotel has one hundred and six.

Patrick hasn’t seen Coach Gagner since the end of March, cleaning out his stall after the Knights’ first round exit. Maybe that’s why it feels so fresh when they’re face to face again at dinner. 

“I’m sorry about March,” Patrick tells him before he’s even really thought about it. The Plymouth Whalers won the Robertson Cup last week. Patrick made himself watch. “You and the Hunters never said so, but I know I choked when you needed me most.” It’s an awkward thing to say over ravioli, and he still doesn’t feel like he understands his playoffs performance enough to have learned from it, but Patrick feels better after saying it. 

After some paternal platitudes, Coach Gagner says, “And who knows? Maybe we’ll see you back in the O next year. Rip’em a whole new one, bring the Robertson home.”

Patrick smiles. He won’t be in the O next season. He loved being in London and he loves being in Buffalo. But he’s outgrown them, like an undersized pair of skates. He’s finally ready to move on. He’s ready for the show. 

“You seem different,” Gags says to him when they’re driving back from dinner, just him and Gags in Patrick’s car.

“How’s that?”

“I don’t know, you’ve got this badass thing going on right now. All mature and shit.” Gags glances over to him. “It’s cool.”

Patrick snorts. “I’m mature now, huh?”

“Call’em like I see’em,” Gags shrugs.

“Well, clearly I’ve gotta fix that.” Patrick devotes the rest of the night to seeing how many rolled-up napkin bits he can get into Gags’ hood or collar without him noticing. It’s good to be together again.

Sadly, even though they’re rooming together, meals are pretty much the only time he spends with Gags over the next few days. Fitness testing has started up, and they aren’t in the same group. GMs, scouts, and media bustle around the middle of the hotel ballroom, crowding around the test equipment. Patrick isn’t sure what the normal amount of spectators is, but it feels like whenever it’s Patrick’s turn to step up, the room fills up. It isn’t his imagination either; his name gets called at a station, people turn their attention there. It’s a little unnerving the first time it happens, but he quickly remembers that it’s a good sign and he has nothing to worry about—he’s ready for this. 

In the moments between tests, he watches the other six guys in his group. It can be hard to tell who’s doing well just from watching. Even when you’re doing well, you’re gonna look stupid on the balance board. Patrick switches from spectating to stretching when watching Karl Alzner murdering his Wingate starts to make Patrick queasy. He feels better later, though, after he destroys Alzner in the vertical jump and push-ups. (Well, Patrick still feels queasy but that’s because of the VO2 Max. Do scouts keep track of who pukes in the trashcan by the bike? And if they do, is it positive or a negative? The first time Patrick ever wishes he had an agent is in that moment, needing someone to tell him whether he’s supposed to hold in his barf or not.)

When he’s performing his hand-eye coordination tests, it’s one-on-one. Patrick has no way of comparing his results with anyone else’s, but from the minute shifts in his test administrator’s poker face, Patrick is going to go out on a limb and say that he doesn’t have anything to worry about in that department.

Unsurprisingly, Carter’s still a tool the few times they’re in the same room together. Patrick imagines strolling up to Carter, asking if his physical evals are done, then socking him in the gut as soon as he’s said yes. The thought makes him smile, but at this point Patrick really just feels sorry for him. Especially after the fourth day of the combine, when Patrick overhears him boasting about nailing his interview with St Louis.

“Yeah man, it was so chill,” Carter is saying to a QMJHL kid sitting next to him at dinner. “The Assistant GM was, like, asking me for recommendations for bars in Guelph like we were bros already. This interview shit is easy if you stay confident.” (Patrick can’t believe Carter fell for that trap. After shaking hands on it, Patrick owes Gags $200 and a six-pack of Molson if Carter MacLean gets drafted by that GM in _any_ round of the draft. He ain’t worried.)

That’s the last Patrick sees of Carter at the combine; Patrick is too busy sitting his own interviews. Sometimes, when there are clear consensus first and second overall picks, tippy top prospects get fewer requests for team interviews than less sought-after players since the teams picking late in the first round know they don’t have a chance. That’s not the case for the draft class of 2007. 

If Patrick were a consensus first overall pick, maybe he’d only get interviews with the first three or four teams picking in the draft. But it’s a tight race at the top and there’s talk of some teams trying to trade up this year. It’s a deep draft. What all this means is that most teams want to do their due diligence by scheduling an interview with Patrick Kane, RW, just in case he’s available later than expected. And by ‘most teams,’ he means all teams. All of them.

He even sits down with Darcy Regier and the Sabres’ scouting contingency, though they’ll be picking twenty-seventh at best, barring a trade. That meeting is a little weird since Patrick actually kind of knows these guys and all of them know his family so well. But Patrick has already been through eleven other interviews by that point, so it’s easier for him to treat it like the others. Everyone in the room knows they aren’t going to land Patrick, anyways. Actually, it sounds like Buffalo has got their eye on some second rounders. Patrick won’t be surprised if they trade for a higher second round pick or an extra one. Maybe they’ll get a right winger who can keep up with Jo—focus, Patrick.

(That night, Patrick realizes the real reason why Regier called the meeting when his dad calls to give him an interview critique based on Regier’s notes. One hand holding his cellphone, Patrick gives himself a commiserating ‘Really?’ look in the mirror of his hotel bathroom, wondering why he’s surprised. He manages to give a passing performance of listening to dutifully to his dad’s directions. His dad means well and old habits die hard.)

Going from meeting to meeting, he feels less like a celebrity and more like a labrat, being poked and prodded while a panel takes diligent notes on his responses. There always seems to be a scout in the room whose main objective is to catch Patrick off guard with an inane question or bizarre behavior. Do you drink, what type of animal best describes you, are you shaving yet, describe your most recent nightmare. The Flyers actually pull out game tape from one of London’s playoff games against Owen Sound, one of Patrick’s absolute worst games, and ask him to walk them through a few plays, what was going through his mind and what would he change. 

Teams with the highest picks don’t get first dibs on interview time slots or anything like that; the schedule is completely determined by logistics. So Patrick has to wait until the second to last day of the combine for his most important meeting.

He didn’t know Denis Savard would be there, which throws him off a little because now is not the time to get out your hockey card collection, Patrick. If you get distracted by Hall of Famers, Turris wins. Luckily, he and Savard don’t talk too much. Dale Tallon is the one running the show and Patrick thinks they’ve meshed together pretty well the few times they’ve spoken before. The Blackhawks aren’t here for his numbers; they’ve scouted him plenty, they know all that stuff. They’re looking for what makes him tick. What makes him stand out. After settling in, Patrick feels like he’s doing a decent job of showing them. A lot of their questions are ones he’s practiced with Erica. What are your weaknesses, talk about your playoffs experience, how do you think size affects you, how has having a coach for a father shaped your style of play. They’re coming up on the twenty-minute limit now; Patrick knows because Tallon keeps glancing to his watch, worried about running out of time. 

There’s a promising twinkle of interest in Tallon’s eye when he puts his notes aside and says to Patrick, “We noticed you don’t have an agent. Tell us about that.”

Patrick grins.

He walks out of the room feeling light.

It still makes him a little nervous that night when he reads a quote that Tallon gave a journalist about Turris: _“That's the kind of kid that you want your daughter to bring home. In fact, I have a few. Maybe if he signs a long contract…”_ And, yeah, Tallon hasn’t said anything like that about Patrick (which, fair). But Patrick isn’t out here trying to date daughters. He’s out here to be indi-fucking-spensable. A comment like that doesn’t mean Tallon has made up his mind. Patrick scrapes together three hours of sleep and calls it a win.

One great thing about Gags being a top prospect alongside Patrick this week is that they’ve had equally unforgiving schedules. Pretty much every team wanted a meeting with Gags, just like Patrick. So for the two of them, the last day isn’t a laid-back, closing ceremonies type deal like it is for a lot of other prospects. Instead, the final day of the combine is the only time Patrick and Gags are available to go in for the last few tests and evaluations the NHL requires. 

If Gags weren’t here waiting with Patrick in the hall, it would be totally empty. The vast majority of prospects got this shit over with days ago. Most guys have gone home already. The written questionnaire isn’t especially long or difficult, not after all the interviews Patrick has already done this week. (Yeah, each team was limited to twenty minutes per player, but that still added up to ten hours of interviewing for Patrick.) Once he’s handed in the worksheet, all he has left are the guide and sentinel screenings. 

Gags goes in and out of his in under five minutes. Everyone has to go through the screenings. (For insurance reasons, maybe?) It’s all just basic sensitivity tests and follow-up evals if needed so that the scouts can dot their i’s and cross their t’s. A brunette lady with a clipboard follows Gags out into the hall. “Kane,” she calls—needlessly, since he’s the only one waiting. It’s almost 4 PM.

“I’ll wait out here for you, dude,” Gags says, holding up his hand for a fistbump. 

“Oh,” Patrick falters, returning the fistbump by reflex. “Nah, you go ahead. I’ll be a bit longer than you.”

“Oh yeah?” Gags gives him a curious look as Patrick follows the clipboard lady back.

Patrick turns before he’s out of sight, one hand on the doorframe. He doesn’t make a conscious decision to smile when he replies. In fact, he’s not aware he’s doing it until after.

“Yeah, man,” Patrick says. “Your boy’s a guide.”

*

Well, he was right about it taking longer. There aren’t any clocks on the wall in here, and he felt like it would be rude to ask the physician’s sentinel assistant what time it is, but it definitely takes over half an hour to get through the first round of testing. First he answers standard procedural questions for the guide specialist lady (Perductologist? Might be her title? Patrick still has twelve chapters to go in that book.) The questions are cut and dry. She has a few follow-up questions about him registering at a late age and whether there was a particular impetus, etc, etc, but his answers are brief and her writing speed is awe-inspiring, so they move right along.

Then they stick a bunch of electrodes on him to start the first round of testing. Actually, Patrick thought it would be the only round of testing, but after a pause, the doctor hooks him right back up and they do it all over again. Patrick doesn’t know if that’s normal, figures it might as well be. He hasn’t done anything like this since the sixth grade. He doesn’t fully understand the meaning of the various zigzags being charted across the computer screens. When he asks, the doctor confirms that the green zigzag labeled ‘PO’ is psychic output, the measure of a guide’s general ability compared to the average guide within their demographic. As he thought, Patrick is on the lower end, hovering right around the eleventh percentile.

“The numbers aren’t as simple as they seem,” she tells him absently when he observes as much aloud.

After the second round of testing, the doctor detaches the electrodes, but she also asks her assistant to leave the room. Patrick fidgets. The printer in the corner keeps on groaning and wheezing out data of some kind in the background.

She takes the seat her colleague just vacated and eyes Patrick across the table. The image of an FBI interrogation skitters uneasily across Patrick’s mind. She clicks her pen. “Tell me about your sleep, Patrick.”

He thought they were done with this part already, but okay. 

They talk about sleep and energy and attentiveness and memory. Patrick wishes he could remember her name. She told him when he first came in, but it’s the last meeting on the last day of this insane event and his brain is fried. He might have tried harder to remember it if he’d realized how in depth these evals were—they’re really getting to know each other here—but in his defense, it isn’t on her coat or a lanyard ID or anything, either. 

She asks if he’s had difficulty guiding anyone lately and he says he hasn’t really tried. She asks if Patrick is in the process of forming or dissolving a bond with someone and he frowns. He already answered that question, like, twenty minutes ago. She already knows he’s barely guided anyone his entire life. He’s told her twice, now. Maybe he should be the one asking _her_ about memory problems.

Her pen clicks. She purses her lips. “Is there something you need to tell me, Patrick? Because this doesn’t add up.” When he simply looks oblivious and shakes his head, she says, “You can talk to me. I don’t have to include anything in my report that doesn’t directly affect your mental and physical health. I’m just trying to make sense of this.”

“Is there something I’m doing wrong? With the tests or whatever?” Patrick asks. “I’m not really knowledgeable on this stuff. I’m trying to learn more now, but I’m probably the shi— _sorriest_ guide you’ll ever meet.” 

_Don’t curse. If you curse during your evals, Turris wins._

She doesn’t bat an eye. “You’d be surprised,” she says casually. “I see way more guide potential in and out of these doors than you’d think. I oversee screenings for NFL and MLB prospects, too. Half the athletes I have appointments with are totally oblivious. But if it doesn’t affect their draft position, they don’t care. One-track crowd, you boys.”

She lays out two equally thick stacks of paper on the table and clicks her pen open, appearing to scan them for differences.

“What doesn’t add up?” Patrick asks. He’s doing a fair job of not getting too concerned; a B- job, maybe. He knows guide shit isn’t really that important to a player profile unless it affects your psychological junk, but because this is an official NHL checkup and in fact his last checkpoint ever before the 2007 NHL Entry Draft, it feels unnecessarily high stakes.

The guide grabs the laptop from the table covered in equipment behind her and turns it so they can both see the screen.

“I know you aren’t in a minted bond because,” she gestures at one of the computers like the pattern of the scatter-plot looking graphic on screen speaks for itself. (It doesn’t.) “But in light of your other test results, you obviously have to be in a bond or a very late-stage incomplete one because your bond receptivity scored at zero.”

“I’ve always scored low on all this stuff,” Patrick shrugs.

The doctor’s nose wrinkles at the phrase ‘all this stuff,’ but she takes a deep breath and marshalls a patient tone. “Even if that were true, this isn’t a matter of low. This is a matter of not at all.”

She stacks the papers in front of her and sweeps them aside, tapping her pen against the notes she’s been compiling from their conversation. “The first step in establishing what exactly that means is establishing whether the patient exhibits Late-Stage Vinculatory Fatigue. VF will cause insomnia, brain fog, deteriorating grip on extrasensory faculties without external help, impaired reflexes, mood swings; your general grab-bag of impaired brain function.” She gives Patrick a meaningful look, and yeah, some of those symptoms sound awful familiar, but he’s still lost. “Also difficulty guiding or be guided by anyone else, and, obviously, the inability to bond with anyone else.”

In the background, the printer finally shuts off. The doctor does not.

“If a proto-bond goes a certain amount of time without being completed or dissolved, your body sort of steps in. Your average bond is minted in under a month. As you get into five, six, seven weeks, VF kicks in. It’s meant to hurry along the decision-making process. It may seem odd for your body to sabotage itself, but sentinels and guides evolved this way because VF incentivizes bonding and bonding sooner—and obviously bonded pairs have a better chance of survival.” 

Patrick squints as the guide continues her deluge of words. He’s struggling to follow along, still fuzzy on her basic premise and how it could possibly apply to him. Yet she’s merrily racing ahead into pathology and theory, either oblivious or indifferent to her audience’s comprehension level.

“Some research suggests that the fatigue could also stem from simple exhaustion. Maintaining a proto-bond requires mental energy in a way that a complete bond doesn’t. I like to use the analogy of a bridge: If you imagine a half-finished bridge—”

“Wait, you’re talking about, like, thrall?” Patrick bursts. He’s only just started to catch on to where she’s going with this. The official gives him a dry look at the word ‘thrall’ like she could specifically name the shitty Lifetime movies Patrick has been learning from. Dumbfounded words drop from his mouth like bowling balls. “That’s _real?”_

“‘Thrall’ is an outdated, misapplied term, but sure, if you want. For our purposes, VF is like thrall.”

“Thrall is real and you think I have it.” Patrick brain is jogging to catch up.

“Based on what I’ve seen today, yes. Obviously, not only you would have it.” She glances up from scribbling some notes. “The other half of your proto-bond would be symptomatic as well.”

First of all, she needs to quit saying ‘obviously’ because none of this is _obvious_ to Patrick and that should be obvious to her. Secondly, if thrall is real and this is the kind of shit it can do, then what about Jonny? Shit, Patrick thinks, if he’s on the line for semi-ruining Jonny’s life because Patrick’s metaphysical guide powers are, like, hung up on Jonny or pining or some shit… 

“What if someone’s abilities, like, shut off completely?” Patrick asks, haunted by how quiet Jonny’s brain went in the locker room during Game 5 against the Rangers. “Is that VF?”

She gives him a sharp look. 

“Not me!” Patrick hastily assures her. “A friend. A sentinel friend.”

“That’s not common, no. For VF to cause that, rather than a cause like head trauma, it would have to be _critically_ late-stage.” When her tone fails to garner any response from Patrick, the doctor elaborates, “As in four, five _months._ You’d see total breakdowns at that point. Obviously, that’s not something you’d be unaware of.”

“Obviously,” Patrick parrots weakly, feeling hollow.

Mistaking Patrick’s response and subsequent silence for satisfaction regarding that line of questioning, she folds her hands and moves on. “Luckily, this is simple enough to deal with. To accept the bond—”

Patrick stops her there. Blood rushing in his ears, he stumbles through explaining that the only person this can possibly be about isn’t someone who Patrick is compatible to bond with. He explains the bond dysfunction. He explains that accepting the bond isn’t an option.

“You misunderstand,” she says gently, after taking a beat to respectfully acknowledge Patrick’s input. “Bond formation is not just contingent on one person’s will or abilities. You can’t get this far in proto-bond without compatibility. It’s like magnets: both sides have to be suited for movement to happen. Attractive movement, I mean, not repulsive movement, obviously. Well, in this metaphor, the… ” 

She goes on about the mechanics and requirements for proto-bonds with an obvious passion for the subject, but Patrick can’t say he absorbs any of it. He’s preoccupied by the loud ringing in his ears.

Sweden. The OHL playoffs, how Patrick couldn’t get his head right no matter what he tried. His erratic sleep patterns ever since. 

_Doc says he needs to finalize a bond,_ Patrick’s dad said. Was the team doctor talking about any old bond? Or a particular one that had already gotten started? Oh god, is Patrick responsible for—But he can’t be because they aren’t—

He only snaps out of it when the guide drops the printed test results in a loud stack onto the table in front of Patrick in a borderline aggressive bid for his full attention. Patrick flashes her an annoyed look for startling him but her face is stone cold serious and he backs down right away. Patrick should probably be thankful she wasn’t straight up snapping in front of his eyes to get him to focus up. 

Now that Patrick is tuned back in, she says, “Bond dysfunction is a complicated subject, and it can mean a whole range of things. But, in my professional experience, these numbers conclusively point to a compatible match with all the right conditions for a healthy bond.”

“If,” she dips her chin, patiently withholding her words until Patrick makes eye contact. “ _If_ that is not something that you both want, I suggest you discuss this with them. Let them firmly tell you no, and firmly tell them no.”

_I need you to tell me no._

“Then it’s recommended that you maintain physical distance from each other, as best as you can. If that isn’t enough to sever it or your symptoms aren’t resolved within a week, which is unlikely, then you’ll need a specialist,” she scribbles down a name and a number at the bottom of a sheet of Patrick’s test results. 

_I need you to tell me no._

“And if that _is_ enough to sever your proto-bond, then you can carry on with your life. I don’t see why it should affect your hockey career, as long as you take care of it soon.” She punctuates this advice with a smart click of her ballpoint pen and waits for Patrick to respond.

By the time he realizes he forgot to ask her what to do if he wants to accept the bond, if they both do, he’s halfway to Ottawa.

*

On the ice, you track skaters peripherally. It’s a fine-tuned awareness. You don’t find who’s open by pausing to look. You skate as fast as you can, keep your eyes on the play, and track everyone else mentally—not just where they are, but where they’re going to go. It’s what scouts call vision. Not sentinel vision, but an ability nonetheless. It’s something that Patrick is very, very good at. On the ice. It’s something that Patrick is very, very used to. On the ice.

Off the ice, in his car, on this highway, Patrick is done with relying on vision. He’s done with leaning on his own understanding to try and piece together what Jonny is thinking. It’s cowardly and Patrick has abruptly outgrown it.

He still has so many questions about the miscommunications, the half-truths, not to mention the basic mechanics. That’s not why he’s driving to Ottawa, though. He could fill his own pocket pad up with all his questions, but only one of them really matters and it isn’t a question for Jonny: What does Patrick really want? Everything else is secondary. Because in spite of all the other questions ( _But if Jonny knew that they were—But if Jonny wanted Patrick to tell him n—Is Patrick even—How long has—_ ) and all their possible answers, if Patrick knows what he wants, he has to put it on the table for Jonny. He can go from there.

Before he peeled out of the parking lot in Toronto hard enough to leave tire marks, Patrick texted his dad asking for Jonny’s room number so that Patrick could call the hotel’s landline, citing some bullshit about Jonny’s cell phone being spotty lately. He called his mom from the road to tell her that he wouldn’t be home tonight, that he was going to surprise Dad at his game tomorrow, and that she should keep it a secret. Patrick was all the way to Ottawa’s city limits by the time his dad texted him back with Jonny’s room number.

To get to the team’s hotel from the parking deck, Patrick has to approach the hotel from behind on a dim little one-way street. It’s a narrow, deserted road with trees crowding its sidewalks. The streetlights haven’t come on yet, but Patrick knows where he’s going. Twenty minutes ago, when that text with Jonny’s room number arrived at the exact same time as Patrick passing the Welcome / Bienvenue sign coming into Ottawa, it felt like a good omen, but the room number ends up being totally unnecessary because Jonny is the first thing Patrick sees when he walks up to the hotel. 

It’s dusk and the gold lights of the glitzy bistro on the hotel’s ground floor give it the appearance of a lantern shining in the blue gloaming. Jonny sits at a table by the floor-to-ceiling windows. Across from him is. Well.

Millions of synapses fire in Patrick’s brain. The worst thing he could do is just stop in the middle of the sidewalk and gawk at what is obviously a date. This must be him.

When Jonny idly glances out the window, he double-takes. Patrick’s feet are still frozen to the sidewalk as he watches Jonny say something quick to his date before slingshotting himself out of his seat and towards the exit. 

Patrick isn’t a big plan guy, but rolling with the punches was also how he ended up in this situation. The last to know what was going on tragically late in the game. That’s going to end today. So he spent the whole drive up here reviewing the game plan. Patrick won’t leave anything between them unclear so that this time when he gets an answer from Jonny, Patrick will fully understand what it means.

When the time comes and Jonny is in front of him and they’re just a foot away from one another on the deserted sidewalk with Jonny babbling at him about how Patrick is supposed to be in Toronto, what happens is this:

“Say yes.”

“What?”

“I want you to say yes,” Patrick blurts gracelessly. And, “I thought, when you said you’d never met a guide I thought you meant,” he runs out of air, has to gulp more. “But you feel it too, don’t you. We _could._ ”

Jonny’s words sputter and restart at speed like a skipping CD. “You don’t—you said you weren’t a guide. And I wanted to respect—We were arguing when you said you weren’t a guide but I can respect that. You shouldn’t have to be anything you don’t want to be.” Of course Jonny felt that way. Jonny, who just wanted to be a hockey player. Not a sentinel hockey player, not a gay hockey player, just a really really good one. “Patrick, you don’t want to be a guide.”

“I want to be _your_ guide.”

Every inch of Jonny has gone tight. Now that Patrick knows how to read Jonny, it’s like watching someone batten down the hatches to a three-storey person. Jonny’s eyes, his hands, his face; they’re all closed. When Jonny speaks, even his voice is tight, "I don't know what you heard about my head, but there's no sense in doing this just to—"

“You’re not listening to me!” Patrick asserts. He shapes out each word with care, “I want to be your guide.”

“We—we won’t be in the same state, let alone on the same team—”

“This isn’t about hockey,” Patrick says for the first time in his life. “This is about you and me. Me, for my part? I don’t care about the distance or any of that. I—” Patrick’s mouth has gone dry; his lungs constrict painfully. Has speaking ever been so hard? “I wanna be the person. Your person. Not because it’s convenient, not because I’ll be any good at it, but because I feel like… I already am? I’m asking you, what do you want?” He’s breathless and a little queasy. _Say yes. Say. Yes._

Patrick manages a shaky inhale and braves a glance up at Jonny’s face, awaiting his fate. He can’t see past his emotions or think over his racing thoughts. It takes a few tries for Patrick to really focus on the person standing before him. Once Patrick can see past his own nerves, he’s surprised to find he’s watching a slow, mesmerizing change happening in Jonny. The shutters blocking him off are coming down. One by one, they fall from Jonny’s eyes and from his posture until Patrick can lay eyes on the person underneath it all and ask himself, oh god, had Jonny shored himself up against a storm or had it been against _temptation?_ Just the idea of it makes Patrick’s heart clench. 

But Jonny isn’t _doing_ anything. He’s just looking at Patrick like… like Patrick’s looking at him. Closely, cautiously, optimistically watching each other for a sign. It’s the same. The goddamn same. Has it always been the same? Patrick gives Jonny the first sign that he can think of, just a quick little jerk of the chin, a ‘c’mon, c’mere.’ He hopes it doesn’t look as desperate as it feels. 

Jonny pulls him in like air. Fast enough that Patrick doesn’t shut his eyes, can see the way Jonny’s shut in prayerful concentration. Time melts. There they are, hidden by the trees and the dusk on a desolate Ottawa back street, kissing like the world is about to end or begin and they don’t care which. “Yes,” Jonny gasps into Patrick’s mouth. “Yes.”

It’s surprisingly hard to open his eyes again; if this isn’t real… But it is. Jonny’s there when Patrick lifts his eyelids, all dark eyes and light touch. He brushes another kiss to Patrick’s parted lips. 

“Not be any good at it,” Jonny scoffs against Patrick’s jaw. “As if.”

Patrick pulls back an inch to look Jonny in the eye. He doesn’t want to pull away but they need to be clear about this. “No, I’m not being cute about it. If we’re gonna do this, do this for real, you need to know that I’m not, like, skilled, here. I’m in the eleventh percentile across the board, and,” Jonny tries to talk over him but Patrick isn’t having it, “ _and!_ That is as of this afternoon—Don’t argue with me, I still want to. I still want to. But you need to know what you’re getting into. We know that I can at least pull you out of the emergency type stuff, like Sweden. But I think that’s it.”

Jonny knocks their foreheads together, and it’s probably supposed to be affectionate but it still hurts. “Patrick, no. I mean, yes,” he laughs into Patrick’s hair. “I would still want to. But no. I don’t care what you tested, you have to know your effect on me.”

Patrick pulls back to give Jonny an unimpressed look. “Jon, that’s not guiding. That’s just me being the normal kind of helpful. I found a bunch of techniques online to help with your sleep and sensitivities and stuff. Just because I know how to make hot chocolate—”

Jonny drops his head to Patrick’s shoulder, abruptly shaking so hard that Patrick stops mid-sentence because, fuck, he’s never seen Jonny cry. He’s not sure what to do. “Patrick,” Jonny manages through the tremors, voice shaking strangely. “Patrick, Patrick…”

As real concern begins to dawn on him, Patrick nudges Jonny into facing him only to find Jonny laughing so hard that it’s silent. Laughing so hard the corners of his eyes actually _are_ wet. 

“Patrick, do you understand how unhelpful that shit is?” When Patrick goes to object, Jonny presses a firm finger to his lips. “No, I appreciate all of it, I do. But, Patrick, you gave me boiling hot chocolate for my thermosensitivity. What the hell kind of sense does that make?”

“I—”

“I mean, even leaving the temperature and strong smells aside, I’m lactose intolerant!” 

“You drank it though!”

“Yeah,” Jonny says slowly, bright red, “so I could _hang out with you._ ”

“That doesn’t. You ate the butter chicken!”

Jonny’s hands flex on Patrick’s shoulders. His flushed face doesn’t flinch, he just nods patiently like he’s talking to a first grader.

“No, but I bought all this unscented shit, too! Shaving cream, body wash, all that stuff. I even got some for the girls.” Erica teased him mercilessly, but as far as Patrick knows, she’s using it. All Patrick did was make the house a zen environment for Jonny to recenter himself.

Jonny wraps him tighter in his arms, chin atop Patrick’s head. It’s a very warm and pleasant place to be, but Patrick could do without the undertones of ‘oh you big dumb baby.’ 

“Unscented stuff still has fragrance, bud.”

“Well—well what kind of bullshit is that?!” Patrick’s voice cracks.

“The label you want to look for is ‘fragrance free.’ For future reference. But you should use whatever you want. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“You never said anything.”

“I thought it was nice.” Jonny beams down at him. “But Patrick, I promise you, there’s nothing about you that is the ‘normal kind of helpful.’ Nothing at all.”

Patrick has an odd urge to say thank you, but he can’t. His mouth is otherwise occupied. 

Somewhere in the distance, a car honks on the main drag. They should move this somewhere else. Jonny grabs Patrick’s wrist and starts down the street. Patrick tugs back. “Don’t you need to say something to,” Patrick waves an awkward hand behind himself to indicate Jonny’s date. 

Jonny winces. “Fuck,” he says, all annoyance with no trace of contrition. Patrick takes back everything he’s ever said about Jonny and his perfect manners. Jonny pulls a keycard from his pocket and presses the plastic flat against Patrick’s sternum. “827.”

Patrick was the one advocating for Jonny to get his dining companion squared away, but his hand bunches up the fabric of Jonny’s collar when he actually moves to comply. He shoots Jonny an incredulous look. Where does he think he’s going? The idea of Jonny leaving his sights right now is unthinkable. Jonny idles, eyeing Patrick’s fist with amusement and commiseration.

Upon realizing what he’s doing—basically acting like a dog who wants his ball thrown without letting go of it first—Patrick flushes hot and pries his hand off Jonny’s shirt one stubborn finger at a time. “Right,” Patrick mutters to himself. Right, Jonny has to leave to do that. And that’s something Patrick can handle. Totally. 

“I’ll meet you up there,” Jonny promises when Patrick makes no further movements. 

Patrick fights down these crazy strong instincts telling him to grab onto Jonny and not let go. He sucks his lips and breathes hard through his nose. “You’re gonna have to walk away first,” he confesses. 

The facial expression Jonny makes in response forces Patrick to squeeze his eyes shut and grit out, “Oh my god, get out of here, you asshole. You are making this _so_ difficult.” He wants to actually push Jonny but Patrick doesn’t trust his hands to get the job done, so he doesn’t let them loose from the fists at his sides. 

By the time Patrick gets to seven-Mississippi and wrenches his eyes open, Jonny is out of sight. Okay, Patrick steadies himself with a deep breath. Room 827. 

He’s finally getting a move on, rounding the corner for the hotel entrance and idly thinking about how he hopes the bond will at least start to take before Jonny’s game tomorrow night when it hits Patrick like a two-by-four that it’s starting to take right fucking now. 

He’s short of breath and dizzy and immediately unable to think of anything but the places they were just touching. All the places where Jonny now _isn’t._ He’s so distracted by the feeling that he passes the entrance to the hotel altogether. Fuck’s sake, they aren’t even in the same room. Or even the same _building_. But Patrick’s heart clenches and his brain starts lighting up like a switchboard and he knows exactly what’s going on. Jesus, how long and how doggedly has Jonny been staving off their bond, that it came flooding in like this basically the moment he stopped holding back? 

At the end of the block, Patrick realizes his mistake and turns around. The hotel is seriously huge, more like the entrance of a mall, which is maybe why Patrick is halfway across the lobby before noticing that his dad is right there, not ten yards away. Those stocky, wide shoulders and stubby-fingered hand gestures are unmistakable. Patrick is just a glance away from being busted. He and Jonny are not supposed to be doing this. Patrick’s supposed to be arriving home in Buffalo, tucking into a meal plan-approved dinner and practicing for his draft day interviews. Jonny’s supposed to be safely, slowly bonding to a nice pre-law student who’ll be a live-in guide like Jonny needs. Not crashing face-first into a bond with his coach’s son.

Patrick’s dad hasn’t spotted him yet, so Patrick scurries for the elevator bank with one hand shielding his face, doing his best to be inconspicuous about it. His best is not very inconspicuous, judging by the weird looks the family in the elevator are giving him, but it gets the job done. Patrick sighs a huge breath of relief when the elevator doors close. He sucks his lips in and presses them together as he weathers their judgment. How is he supposed to be a normal human when throughout all of this he’s busy trying to process these foreign feelings flooding his brain? For instance, why does this elevator sort of smell and sound like a bistro? 

“Um. Eighth floor, please.”

Halfway up, he could swear someone to his right mutters something like “sorry,” but when he turns, no one is talking. He’s able to play it off as casually stretching his neck, but then he’s positive someone mutters “Buffalo” and Patrick has to snap his head around for an explanation. That’s when it hits him that what he’s hearing is runoff. Runoff from Jonny. Patrick can hear ambient chatter that isn’t there and silverware and cars and the breakneck _thump-a-thump_ of a heartbeat. It’s fast, so fast that Patrick fancies he can feel it right up until he realizes that he can. It’s his own heartbeat. And then he’s so preoccupied by the concept of Patrick’s own pulse ringing even now in Jonny’s ears that one of his fellow passengers has to nudge him because they’re on the eighth floor already and he’s just standing there like a dick. 

He stumbles out and ambles blindly down the hall till a flash of red stops him like a traffic light. Patrick knows that red hair. Scrambling, he ducks into the ice room to make sure Campbell doesn’t recognize ‘little Kane,’ who—again—is supposed to be polo-shirting it up in Toronto or Buffalo, not in Ottawa boning his billet brother. 

Crouched beside the ice maker, he breathes quietly and he counts and he thinks about what will happen if he’s spotted right here right now.

At one-hundred-and-two-Mississippi, Patrick risks it and darts down the hall to 827. He’s five doors down from home free when someone grabs his wrist from behind. Instead of being stopped or yanked around, Patrick is propelled forward even faster by a warmth all along his back and now someone’s getting fresh with—oh, it’s just the room key being retrieved from Patrick’s back pocket. Jonny’s hand shoots out over Patrick’s shoulder to unlock the door. 

And just like that, they’re inside and Jonny’s caging him against a wall with long, careful fingers walking whatever pieces of Patrick they can reach. Sweet relief whistles its way across Patrick’s skin in their wake. “Finally,” Jonny mutters and promptly steals Patrick’s breath.

Patrick’s head spins. When his mouth is free to speak, the first thought to fly loose is, “That was fast.”

“It really wasn’t,” Jonny rasps without humor, as soon as he manages to release Patrick’s mouth again.

“Did he—”

Jonny presses a finger to his lips and it makes Patrick shiver now as much as it had in that auto shop, before they’d ever kissed. “You really wanna talk about him right now?”

Patrick makes a monumentally grumpy face in silent protest of being shushed, but that only prompts Jonny to smooth the lines between Patrick’s brows and around Patrick’s frown with tender fingers. How’s Patrick supposed to maintain a frown in conditions like this? Besides, Jonny is right: Patrick doesn’t want to waste another thought on Jonny’s stupid, unfortunate, probably-a-perfectly-okay-guy, almost guide. Patrick instead focuses on the way his skin is lighting up under Jonny’s fingers. He’s been in withdrawal without Jonny around; all of Patrick’s senses drink him in.

Pine bark and spice tickle Patrick’s nose. He missed Jonny’s smell. He expected Jonny to occupy Patrick’s mouth again, but seconds pass and Patrick’s lips are still his own. Patrick slits his eyes open to find Jonny staring down at Patrick’s hands. His thumbs trace the veins on Patrick’s forearms down to his wrists. Jonny spends long moments simply mapping the intricate machinery of Patrick’s fingers, which reflexively twitch under his observation. It feels nicer than it ought to. So nice that Patrick lets his eyes drift shut again and lets the incomparable comfort of Jonny’s touch and smell wash over him.

When Patrick opens his eyes again, the look in Jonny’s catches him off guard. Those aren’t the eyes of a friend, those are the dark eyes of something that is higher on the food chain than Patrick. Jonny makes no effort to hide it anymore.

“C’mon,” Jonny rasps, tugging hard on Patrick’s shirt. “I’m done waiting.”

“You,” Patrick falters. His body’s ahead of him, though, reaching out to palm the front of Jonny’s shorts at the first opportunity he sees, totally on autopilot because Patrick has thought of nothing more than this for months now. Jonny shivers and Patrick snaps out of it hard, withdrawing his hand so hard his elbow bangs against the wall.

“We can’t, though,” Patrick pants. He flexes his jaw, summoning up all his resolve. He won’t let them fuck up at the finish line. But he can’t stop the words that follow and basically cancel his first ones out, “… can we?”

“Can’t you?” Jonny baits him, all throaty, as though he doesn’t know perfectly well what Patrick’s talking about. 

“It’s not settled yet!” Patrick isn’t proud of the high pitch to his voice. “It’s just as risky as it would’ve been weeks ago. Fuck, you’re the responsible one,” he pleads, desperate for some back-up.

He has Jonny’s full attention now. His dark eyes focus keenly on Patrick like he’s trying to unzip Patrick’s words and get at what’s underneath. Maybe he’s trying to tell whether Patrick’s being serious. Oh god, Patrick can only hope he’s being serious, that he means it. He’s certainly trying to mean it, but it’s difficult with Jonny’s broad palm burning up his upper thigh. Whatever Jonny sees makes him duck down for a slow kiss. Once Jonny’s had his fill of abusing Patrick’s lower lip, he leans back the littlest bit with a satisfied gleam in his eye. Fuck, Jonny’s beautiful. 

He leans back another inch, lets Patrick follow him. It must be obvious to him that Patrick’s already on the line, hooked before Jonny even says the magic words with that challenging tilt to his chin: “Live a little.”

That’s all she wrote.

Patrick would give him anything. For better or for worse. “Okay, Jonny. Okay.” Patrick doesn’t even know precisely what he’s agreeing to, but he can’t wait to find out. 

Jonny’s hands dive under the back of Patrick’s shirt, pulling him close. When he pauses for air, Jonny mutters, “You have freckles back there, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah,” Patrick blinks. “You’ve seen, haven’t you?”

“Not all of them.” Jonny swallows, then meets Patrick’s eyes. “I want to.”

The way Jonny is looking at him almost makes Patrick break out into a sweat on the spot. Since, contrary to appearances, Jonny’s stare isn’t going to incinerate Patrick’s shirt, Patrick has to get rid of it himself. Which means he needs to get his hands out of Jonny’s back pockets and free up his arms and… and what the fuck is that sound. 

Patrick can’t pretend he doesn’t hear it; not with Jonny’s keen senses dialing the noise up so high that the ringtone makes both of them jolt. When Patrick fishes out his cell phone, for the express purpose of chucking it across the room, the area code is 416. Godammit.

“Toronto,” Patrick laments under his breath before punching the keyboard. “Hello?”

“Good evening,” says a voice that sounds far too indifferent to the fact that he’s ruining Patrick’s life. “I’m looking for Patrick Kane.”

“Uh,” Patrick squeezes the plastic of his phone too hard, trying to ignore way Jonny’s thumb is brushing back and forth across his vertebrae. “This is he,” Patrick stumbles. He sounds like a dipshit.

“I’m”—there’s no way in hell Patrick can be expected to actually take note of this dude’s name right now—“from Central Scouting and I’m calling to go over what to expect from us between now and the draft next month, as well as answer any questions you may have.”

Here’s a question: Why don’t you fuck off?

“Okay.” One-handed, Patrick mimes something incomprehensible even to himself in Jonny’s direction, swipes the room key Jonny had discarded to the floor, and escapes into the hallway hoping to find some sobriety there. This is important. Probably. So he tells himself. Then he remembers the hallway isn’t safe and secrets himself inside the ice room again.

“I hope you had a good experience at the combine?” The guy is full of unpleasant pleasantries like that, taking impossibly long to get down to business. 

Every step away from Room 827 feels weird. Patrick starts to feel an uncomfortable sensation, like he’s leaning too deep into a pregame stretch. He feels stretched too thin. The ice room is a startling contrast from Jonny’s arms. Cold. Dark. The Central Scouting rep is talking about mailing itineraries and transportation and dress codes and more legal documents. Important. Probably.

Patrick only manages five minutes of listening to information vital to his life’s ambition without hopelessly getting distracted. He isn’t sure whether it’s simple arousal or some complex bond stuff, but these little licks of heat start zinging up his spine and they’re impossible to ignore.

“Now regarding the number of seats you’ll need for family at the draft…” The voice on the phone is starting to sound like one of those adults on Charlie Brown. It just can’t compete with the clamoring of Patrick’s nervous system. It feels like Patrick’s spine is a sparkler and someone took a flame to its base. He knows it’s Jonny’s fault but he doesn’t know exactly how. Patrick isn’t catching a word of this official’s schpiel.

Patrick eyes the thrumming ice machine. Considers dumping some down his pants. Then another wave of _something_ rushes over Patrick so strongly his toes curl in his shoes. Ice can’t help him now.

Fuck it. 

“Um,” Patrick cuts in, though the official is clearly not finished talking. “Thank you for letting me know. Is that all?”

On the other end of the line, the man takes a beat before clearing his throat. “Central Scouting will be mailing out hard copies of all our combine results by the week’s end. So yes, that’s everything for now.”

“Oh good.” Patrick hangs up. Not his best showing; fingers crossed their file on his personal evals is already shut. He races back to the room because something is going on in there, and whatever the hell it is, it’s making Patrick feel crazy.

When Patrick keys himself back inside the hotel room, Jonny is not neck-deep in electric ecstasy scorpions, but he does have two fingers curved inside himself and apparently that has the same effect. Patrick’s brain shorts out. He tries to speak but all that comes out is heavy breathing because holy _shit,_ Toews.

“What did they say?” Jonny asks as he rolls over to face Patrick, just the littlest bit out of breath. His neck is red and his clothes are gone and god his shoulders are beautiful and wait was he using _three_ fingers?

“I honestly have no idea,” Patrick breathes from the threshold as he tosses his phone to floor, too overcome to try and lie. His need to be on top of Jonny is so strong that it’s paralyzing him from doing anything about it. “What’s happening in here?”

Jonny colors a little and shifts to sit cross-legged on the sheets, both hands where Patrick can see them. With a measure of authority, he tells Patrick, “I’ve thought about this and this is the best way for now: …”

Whether he says more, Patrick doesn’t know. His eyes are busy greedily taking in every inch of Jonny and Patrick’s brain basically flatlined at the words ‘I’ve thought about this.’ Patrick’s attention lovingly meanders the long lines of Jonny’s body, wondering what exactly he’s ‘thought’ about and whether it involves letting Patrick straddle those incredible thighs—

“—Patrick! Focus up!”

Patrick snaps to attention. His gaze is so heavy that dragging it back up to Jonny’s face is like lifting his hockey bag with his nose. “What? I’m here,” he breathes out dumbly.

“This is. You’re gonna sit here and I’m gonna. Get on top and then. You just. Gotta let me lead. Okay,” Jonny’s agitation and uneven breathing break his sentences in odd places. You’d think they were in a timeout huddle going over a play.

Jesus. Patrick didn’t see this coming. He thought maybe he’d get to jerk Jonny off or something. Not… “I can do that,” Patrick hears himself say before he has any idea whether it’s true. In fact, the more he thinks about it the more he doubts his own discipline, but by then he’s already mindlessly undoing his belt.

“Hang on,” Patrick says. “I’ll…” He steps away from the bedside so he can kick his pants off more quickly. His Blackberry chimes from the floor and Patrick crosses the room to turn the fucker off for good. Patrick’s shirt is dealt with just as quickly and with just as much prejudice. 

Patrick startles when he feels a hot caress down his chest—Jonny is all the way across the room. What he’s feeling is Jonny brushing a hand down his own torso to adjust himself. Christ. Patrick can feel it all. It gobsmacks him, since he’s been picturing all these complicated steps and rituals and meditating under waterfalls before you could get to this point. Bonding turns out to be so simple. For them, anyway. It’s not done yet, but it’s definitely moving along. 

In his haste to get naked, Patrick nearly falls over with one foot caught in his briefs, but Jonny either doesn’t notice or is too revved up to laugh at him. Patrick has basically spent this whole week parading his body around for assessment, but nothing hits him harder than Jonny eyeing him up and grunting like he’s been punched in the chest. 

“ _Fuck_ you’re hot,” Jonny exhales like he’s mad about it. 

There’s something really superficially gratifying about how into him Jonny is, in a way that seems to have nothing to do with Patrick being a guide or a hockey player or even a friend. Jonny wants this. He’d want it anyways. Patrick’s skin prickles appreciatively under the attention

“Hey, uh-uh,” Jonny protests, catching Patrick by the hip before he can join Jonny up close on the bed. Patrick’s about to ask a very fair question about how this is gonna work if he isn’t allowed to fucking touch Jonny when Jonny’s intentions are made clear.

“Fucking figures,” Jonny grumbles after getting an eyeful of Patrick’s equipment. Patrick takes the opportunity to stare right back, even though he’s known about Jonny’s stupid pretty dick since walking in on him last December.

Patrick grins wide. “Should I apologize?”

Jonny rolls his eyes and yanks Patrick down by his elbow. They tussle a bit, but it’s patently obvious that they just want to be touching. Patrick props himself up on the pillows at the head of the bed and runs his eyes over the tight, resolute shapes that make up Jonny’s back, taking a moment to try and absorb the fact that they’re really here.

The realness sets in all at once when he has Jonny straddling his lap. In fact, it’s too real. “Are you sure we should be doing this?” Patrick pants, just to mathematically clinch his title as his own worst enemy. “I mean, with your—”

“I don’t care. I just need to be,” Jonny’s eyes shut in frustration or maybe self-consciousness. “Close. I don’t fucking kno—”

“Me too, Jonny,” Patrick interrupts. “I know. Me too.” He can feel it, the magnetic pulse. He’s wanted this for months and getting closer just makes it worse. Patrick feels like if somebody doesn’t get inside somebody else soon, he’ll die. He knows exactly what Jonny means. He just wanted to be sure. “Just tell me,” Patrick says, and if he were asking for nuclear codes his voice wouldn’t be any graver. “Tell me how.”

Jonny doesn’t say anything, just pulls Patrick into a sinfully slick kiss. He shouldn’t be letting Jonny talk him into this. Thoughtlessly, Patrick makes a grab for Jonny’s dick, curved prettily towards his navel, but Jonny smacks his hand away. 

“Can’t,” Jonny gasps. “Too sensitive. Like this for now,” and then he’s doing exactly what he told Patrick not to, brushing his fingers below Patrick’s navel, past the gingery hair there to wrap around his dick. Jonny works quick like he’s scared Patrick will change his mind. Patrick isn’t fully cognizant of what’s happening but when Jonny pulls his hand away, Patrick’s dick is slippery with lube and, oh, Jonny’s sitting up now and sinking down around Patrick’s dick, or trying to, and there’s no danger of Patrick gripping Jonny’s dick because both of his hands are white-knuckling the bedding. Jonny prepped, but Patrick is thick and Jonny doesn’t take him easy right away. It takes some long, tense moments where they’re both sweating purely from the effort of being patient. Jonny’s fingers flex around the cap of Patrick’s shoulder. He can’t believe Jonny trusts him with this. 

When Jonny lets him in at last, he feels incredible. Warm and slick—slick by design. Made that way for _Patrick_. Keeping his hips still is hell, but Patrick is weighed down by Jonny’s faith that he won’t move, even more than he is by the actual weight of Jonny himself pressing down on him. That trust is huge because the bond isn’t stable yet. Patrick can feel it. If bonds are bridges, this one’s one of those rickety Indiana Jones-types. It sways this way and that, and sometimes a shared feeling will cut out like it’s fallen through one of the missing slats. They’ve got to be careful--which is insane. It’s insane that Patrick is tasked with being careful and sober and measured when he still isn’t even sure how he’s fitting inside Jonny. 

Jonny starts up a slow rhythm, thigh muscles flexing obscenely. He keeps making these deep involuntary noises that Patrick feels in his own chest. Those sounds hit Patrick, maybe even harder than the sensation, because Patrick has been fantasizing about how this would feel, has been jerking off about it like it’s his second job for what feels like forever and the sounds make it real.

There’s this feeling, unfamiliar and needy, that cuts in and out like a patchy radio signal. It’s a raw and vulnerable sensation in a place Patrick’s never felt that before. Hints of what he’s making Jonny feel with every slow press down. It’s all faint background noise to the clamoring immediacy of Jonny’s tight heat around his dick and the inescapable feeling of being under Jonny’s thumb. That is, until a fluke change of angle has Patrick grazing Jonny’s prostate, just once. Patrick twitches, his nerves all confused about what they are and aren’t feeling. Patrick has never paid any attention to his prostate; he didn’t know his body could feel like this. Even as faint and secondhand as it is, it would be impossible for this sensation to be background noise. 

In the world outside Patrick’s head, he belatedly registers the gorgeous noise being pulled from Jonny. It’s as deep and satisfied as an I-told-you-so. The moan falters into a smattering of smaller sounds in the back of Jonny’s throat as he tries to hit that spot again. He’s not finding it. Patrick’s hips jerk from the desire take the reins from Jonny, but he catches himself. He can’t falter now; he’d be breaking Jonny’s trust. The next time his hips twitch, Jonny’s the one who keeps him in place and it’s a skin-sizzling reminder that even while Patrick has to actively work at not breaking Jonny, Jonny’s got inches and pounds on Patrick enough to manhandle the shit out of him. And yeah, Patrick is into that.

Even as Jonny grows increasingly agitated, his movements on Patrick’s dick are so careful. So disciplined. He isn’t even touching his own dick. Patrick won’t lie, it’s hot being used like this. Holding tight like he’s Jonny’s personal sex toy. Jonny’s face takes on this little frown which, while deeply attractive, cannot be allowed in any bed the two of them share. Patrick can feel what Jonny feels. He knows exactly what Jonny’s gunning for and exactly how he’s missing it. 

“Fuck,” Jonny chokes. It’s throaty enough to be a nondescript sex noise, but Patrick knows it’s coming from frustration as much as stimulation. Jonny adjusts the placement of his knees on either side of Patrick’s thighs and tries again, lowering himself slow, then jerky with desperation. “Fuck.”

. Patrick tastes blood, biting his lip to stay still while Jonny writhes on his dick, quietly keening as he tries in vain to get that perfect angle… Patrick shouldn’t. He should keep biting his lip and tonguing the blood. Then again, they shouldn’t be doing any of this to begin with. So. 

“Jonny,” gasps Patrick, at last. The plea is ripped unwillingly from his chewed-up mouth. 

When Jonny’s eyes stay resolutely shut in concentration—startlingly similar to the face he made while struggling to replicate Patrick’s maneuvers on the basketball court—Patrick has to try again. _“Jonny.”_ It’s far too close to a sob. It gets his attention this time. “Jonny, tell me I can.”

From his silence, Jonny knows what he’s being asked. He clenches his jaw hard, circling his hips as he sinks down again. Patrick’s incapable of being anything other than utterly _into_ the feeling of Jonny pulling himself onto Patrick like that; of course he’ll moan. But he’s got to frown, too, unsure whether Jonny’s holding out for fear or for stubbornness—this is _Jonny,_ after all. 

Jonny huffs. He keeps getting close to the spot. Maddeningly close, yet so far. He’s not gonna get there without Patrick. He shouldn’t have to. “Jonny.”

The tight curve of Jonny’s mouth, of his jaw, is achingly familiar. The way that single-minded determination tensely coils in those features is quintessentially Jonny. It’s not fear holding him back.

“Bud,” Patrick tells him breathlessly. “You’re not gonna get it.”

“Fuck you,” Jonny spits on reflex, like they’re in weight room chirping about each other’s one-rep max.

“Jonny, say I can.” It’s an inch away from begging and it’ll be there soon if nothing changes. His ass fidgets just barely, out of his control. Patrick feels like he could accurately ballpark the threadcount of the sheets his cheeks are brushing against, every nerve ending is on such high alert. He can’t think. He can’t breathe. He can’t move, he can’t move, he absolutely cannot move unless Jonny says so. 

He grips Jonny’s thighs white-knuckled. “Please, please tell me I can. I want to, Jonny. I can give you it,” he babbles. Language is leaving him. Discipline and care, too. 

A guttural “fuck” is all Patrick gets in return. Jonny’s body is drawn tight, swelling with a long inhale. At his exhale, a heavy hand is slung past Patrick’s shoulder to the headboard behind it. Please, Patrick thinks. Please. 

“You can.” When Jonny gives the words to him, they’re whispered rough and vital like they’ve been dragged up from the deepest part of him. 

Patrick chokes on his own enthusiasm, on the thousands of motor functions his body is scrambling to execute at the same time. He shivers at the feeling of Jonny’s thumb brushing against Patrick’s hairline and the short blonde hairs there behind his ear. Patrick has waited for this for so long. Feet flat to the mattress, one guiding hand on the small of Jonny’s back, he slams home without error. The spare little gasp Jonny gives isn’t loud—it would have been silent if his mouth was farther from Patrick’s ear. But it’s the best noise Patrick’s ever drawn out of him, aside from that “yes.”

The feeling is incredible and scary—it’s so much, what they’re giving each other. Maybe too much. He should say something. But, scariest of all, there’s no stopping Patrick now either way. He thrusts up again into Jonny’s heat, his dick perfectly angled to make Jonny curse and his gaze perfectly angled to catch the way it pulls a flawless pearl of precome from Jonny’s slit. Just the ghost sensation of what Jonny is feeling makes Patrick tremble. What Patrick doesn’t anticipate is how feeling those fireworks in a place he isn’t being touched makes him want to squirm, desperate to feel that touch for real. It gives his thrusts a needy, frenetic edge.

He anchors a hand into the unyielding muscle of Jonny’s ass to hold them together so Patrick can try grinding against Jonny’s prostate back and forth. Patrick feels it so keenly—there’s a discernable difference in their connection from as recently as two minutes ago. It’s getting stronger, more vivid. It’s making Patrick’s nerves go haywire and making the decision-making part of his brain bolder, less careful, more eager to keep testing the boundaries.

“Oh _fuck—”_ Jonny’s eyes go hazy. Dangerously hazy. He shouldn’t be letting Patrick do this. Not after being careful all this time, not when they’re nearly there, so close to doing this right. The guilt trip never gets off the ground because, despite the objective logic to the contrary and Patrick’s hair-raising awareness of the risks, nothing has ever felt more right to Patrick in his entire life. 

Patrick fucks in smooth, flexing dextrous, antsy fingers into the sheets and the taut skin of Jonny’s hip to avoid reaching for Jonny’s cock. Patrick knows with a brand new extrasensory certainty that he doesn’t need to lay a finger on Jonny’s dick to get him there. He still wants to, though. Badly. Later, Patrick promises himself.

“Yeah,” Jonny moans in low agreement. Patrick’s been making his promises out loud, apparently. “Ah fuck,” Jonny pants. “I was kinda hoping you’d suck at this.”

Patrick would laugh if he had oxygen to spare. So damn competitive. “Like fuck you were.”

Jonny doesn’t fight him, but he does point out, “Mighta made it easier to last, at least.” His eyes squeeze shut in concentration.

“Maybe,” Patrick admits, his voice covered up by the moan he startles out of Jonny with a well-timed thrust. “But we’ve got plenty of time for that.”

Jonny’s next groan takes on a pleading note. “It’s too,” he gives up on his sentence halfway through.

“Too much?” Patrick’s thrusts falter. 

First Jonny shakes his head and Patrick lets his hips roll up the way they want to, but then the word that leaves Jonny’s mouth is “Yeah.” Before Patrick can bite his own tongue off trying to figure out what he’s supposed to do here, Jonny rasps, “Don’t stop.”

On either side of his thighs, Patrick can feel Jonny’s calf muscles flex. He’s close. There’s that crease between Jonny’s brows. He’s close and he’s holding back. “Just a little longer,” Jonny gasps, his head hung and expression angled down at his own body like that’s who he’s talking to. “It’s too fuckin’…” he breaks off again.

Patrick won’t stop, but he needs to see Jonny’s eyes. “Plenty of time, babe,” Patrick soothes with a gentle finger sweeping down Jonny’s cheek. “Look at me,” Patrick pleads as he grinds up, as deep into Jonny as he can manage.

Jonny does look, eyes wide and as clear as Patrick has ever seen them, and then he’s letting go before Patrick can even ask him to. He bears down on Patrick’s dick as hard and as low as he can like he can’t get enough of it, slicking up Patrick’s abs with his come.

Patrick couldn’t pinpoint when, but at some point in the last little stretch of time their connection stopped cutting out. The escalation doesn’t surprise Patrick; the way it yanks him headfirst over the edge along with Jonny does. Totally without warning, Patrick is shuddering, hands skittering without permission to Jonny’s back to clutch him close as he empties himself inside. Jonny lets out a soft, curious noise at the sensation. Gravity has been reversed. Jonny looms over him and Patrick falls up into him. He clings to Jonny with every limb at Patrick’s disposal. There’s an earth-shattering catharsis coursing through Jonny, sent along to Patrick through the bond. It feels… set.

Patrick blinks up at Jonny to see if the feeling’s mutual and finds Jonny’s face totally robbed of its ever-present focus. Because Patrick isn’t qualified to distinguish come-dumb from fugue state, he has to ask, “Are you okay? Are you with me?”

“‘m with you.” He’s boneless with release, like today is the first day Jonny’s ever been able to take the world off his shoulders.

“You look a little…” As the thundering desperation drains from Patrick’s veins, it leaves room for common sense and concern to return. “… Unfocused.”

Unexpectedly, Jonny’s response is a slow, soft grin. “‘Cause I can be.” 

Without Jonny keeping his body under tight control, he quickly becomes twice as heavy. Patrick eases out so they can lie more comfortably. He’s not used to this Jonny, the one who can tip his head back and stare at the ceiling without any crease between his brows, totally open. It begins to hurt Patrick’s neck to stare like this but he doesn’t want to look away, so he rolls to lay on his stomach and keeps on looking. Something about seeing Jonny at peace is just good for his soul. Patrick lets his mind drift; it sways tethered to Jonny’s like two mylar balloons bouncing off one another dumbly, blissfully in a breeze. 

There’s still so much Patrick wants to do. He really wants to suck Jonny’s dick, but he’s not sure how Jonny’d feel about it. Even though Patrick’s pretty sure their bond is minted, Jonny’s dick is bound to be sensitive from just coming and everybody’s got their different preferences about that. That doesn’t stop him from thinking about slipping his lips over Jonny’s stupidly pretty dick and pulling the dumbest faces imaginable from him with his tongue. He gets so distracted by the thought that he doesn’t notice Jonny has moved until there are lips pressed to the side of his neck. 

Patrick hears Jonny inhale deeply and the sound reminds him of that first breath you take when you arrive at a place you travelled a long time to get to, that first whiff of the ocean or maybe of home. A tongue brushes the sweat gathered at the nape of Patrick’s neck and he hazily wonders whether Jonny likes the way he tastes. Kisses land on scattered places cradled in the curve of Patrick’s back, disorganized without being random. His freckles, Patrick suspects. Jonny’s lips venture to the dimples at the base of Patrick’s spine and then below. Lightheaded from coming and disoriented from being fully bonded to a sentinel, Patrick is just dizzily curious at first. Behind him, Jonny pushes at Patrick’s legs until he can lie between and then oh my god.

It catches Patrick off guard. Sure, it comes up sometimes in the porn he watches. But Patrick has always skipped past it to get to the good part. He just never saw the particular appeal of rimming; if somebody wanted to get their mouth on something, Patrick’s dick was right there. And it seems to him that most teenage guys are obsessed with blowjobs, so Jonny hopping straight there totally comes out of left field. Patrick’s languor deserts him in an instant, legs going tight and hips sent squirming. “What are you—”

At the second open swipe of Jonny’s tongue, insistently hot and wet, Patrick’s leg kicks out like a spasm. Maybe he makes a sound. His body doesn’t know how to behave at all. “Sorry,” Jonny is rumbling. “Sorry, I have to—” and then he’s back to it, paying such intimate attention, exposing Patrick in a way he’s never been exposed before. Some instinct has Patrick hiding his face and he’s not even sure why. It’s not… The feeling isn’t _bad,_ but the novel, knee-shaking pleasure of it doesn’t lessen the strangeness one bit. Patrick traps a strangled groan inside the mattress. Isn’t it just like Jonny to stomp not tiptoe right down that line between heavenly and mildly traumatizing. 

The squirming doesn’t put Jonny off. Jonny knows Patrick doesn’t want him to stop. Whether that’s the bond or just Jonny’s innate stubborn confidence is anyone’s guess. Jonny’s thumbs have been spreading Patrick’s cheeks wide, but now they dip in a little to help open Patrick’s hole so that Jonny has a spine-shaking amount of access to the sensitive skin hidden there.

It gets Patrick wet so quickly. With how tender he is from coming, it’s almost like he’s the one who just got fucked and now Jonny’s eating him back open. The mental image makes Patrick loud right away, makes him flex his hips into the sensation. He buries his head in the covers, desperately trying not to think about what he must look like right now, on his stomach pushing himself back on Jonny’s tongue like a slut. Embarrassment burns bright in Patrick’s cheeks, fed by a niggling fear that Jonny is laughing at him back where Patrick can’t see. But Patrick can’t help showing how easy he is for this; he doesn’t know how to hide it. It’s nothing like getting head. His need builds but there’s no way for Patrick to help quench it himself; he’s out of his depth. It totally relies on Jonny and when Jonny manages to get his tongue right where Patrick didn’t know he needed it, Patrick feels the satisfaction in the strangest places. It’s like Jonny has scratched an itch Patrick wasn’t aware of and rewired all his other nerves in the process.

Jonny’s enthusiasm hits Patrick harder than he would’ve thought; it’s like there’s no part of Patrick that Jonny doesn’t want to know, by any means available to him. No part of Patrick that he isn’t desperate for. Jonny wants it all. Beyond simply making Patrick feel wanted, it makes him want to be known. Every bit of himself. It makes him want to peel himself open for Jonny and not just in the way that involves Patrick inching his knees further apart.

It was driving him crazy when he was fucking Jonny, the almost-there friction on Patrick’s rim, against his prostate. Neither were sensations Patrick knew for real and the tease had only made him needier. With his ass tilted up, Patrick’s dick swings heavy between his legs. The motion whenever he hitches his hips into the feeling of Jonny’s tongue makes Patrick aware that his dick is leaking. He can feel the chill of cool air where the head of his dick is wet, but he honestly couldn’t say whether it’s from coming bare minutes ago or that he’s already raring to go again. He genuinely doesn’t know if the come drivelling onto the bedspread is new or not. Patrick knows his body way better than most people, how it will respond to a full-body check, exactly how much it can handle on the weights or on the bike. But this is a situation Patrick doesn’t know his body in at all and it’s disorienting to be out of control, to have zero concept of how he’s going to respond next.

Jonny lets the pad of one of the fingers spreading Patrick’s cheeks slip down alongside his tongue to press against Patrick’s fluttering hole. But unlike Jonny’s tongue, his forefinger slips inside, so effortlessly that Patrick isn’t convinced that Jonny did it on purpose. It keeps going, a slow, inexorable press inward until Jonny’s knuckle meets Patrick’s rim. Patrick is unprepared for just how deeply he’d feel it, but he’s equally unprepared for how starved he’d feel for more. It’s a taste of Patrick’s own medicine when Jonny unerringly finds Patrick’s prostate right away. His hips buck uselessly—he could drop them to the bed to finally rut his dick against the sheets for some relief but that would mean less leverage to fuck himself back onto Jonny so it’s a nonstarter.

Jonny’s groaning, too, and it sends delicate ripples of vibration across Patrick’s skin, up Patrick’s spine. There’s no need to wonder why. He’s feeling what Patrick feels, how good this is for him. Through their bond, Patrick can feel Jonny feeling it, their sensations bouncing and reflecting back and forth between each other, echoing fainter and fainter each time. In fact, if Patrick focuses hard enough, it’s like looking into a mirror tunnel so infinite that it dizzies him. It makes Patrick wonder whether Jonny was right about him being a killer guide after all, if he can perceive that chain reaction so acutely.

Even with a finger already inside, the flat of Jonny’s tongue seems glued to Patrick. Jonny flicks his tongue curiously around his own knuckle, along the thin margin where Patrick’s skin is on the brink of being outer or inner and is therefore neither. Jonny is helplessly tracing and retracing the same small track of taut skin around the opening, the way Patrick would if this was really good pussy. Patrick is torn between astonishment that he’s letting this happen and astonishment that he’s never let it happen before.

He’s dying for a hand on his dick, but when Patrick snakes a hand down from the headboard to try and satisfy the inescapable need, Jonny steals the hand and places it where Jonny’s was a moment ago. 

“Here,” Jonny rasps, distracted. “Can you…?”

Patrick catches on, obligingly reaching both hands back to hold himself open to free up Jonny’s hands. When Jonny’s finger slips free from Patrick’s hole, Patrick’s cock twitches in anticipation of being touched at last. Jonny’s arms slide forward on either side of Patrick’s elevated thighs, but his long fingers instead curve tight around the lean ridges of Patrick’s hip bones and snatch them backwards so Jonny’s mouth can push in even closer. Patrick whines, half tortured and half smitten—Jonny’s so single-minded, Patrick’s dick isn’t on his mind at all. He’s totally absorbed by the task at hand, all Jonny’s efforts reliant on his tongue now that both of his hands are elsewhere. He uses their grip to his advantage, bracing Patrick’s hips to lap more and more insistently at the tight furl of Patrick’s skin while Patrick’s own hands give his mouth access. 

It isn’t idle exploration now, if it ever was. Patrick’s hazily reminded of something one of his OHL teammates said months ago about Jonathan Toews never doing anything without laser-focus. He has a goal even now. Patrick’s rim, barely stretched, isn’t giving Jonny an inch, but the tip of Jonny’s tongue keeps making little stabs, undaunted. He wants in, bad.

Flattening his face against the sheets, Patrick surrenders to the incomparable feeling of Jonny’s determined, filthy licks. He feels every little touch so strongly; it’s a superhuman awareness that steals all of Patrick’s cool. Somewhere deep in Patrick’s consciousness, a timebomb is ticking; Patrick can’t come from this. Practically no attention at all is being paid to his dick—he keeps waiting for Jonny’s hand to reach around and even though it doesn’t, the pleasure keeps escalating without it like Patrick’s dick is just vestigial. Patrick is caught between the headboard and Jonny’s iron grip prying his thighs apart. There’s nowhere to run and, dear god, Patrick did not expect it but he could live inside this feeling forever.

After enough insistent prodding and sheer force of will, Jonny’s tongue slips inside. Instead of jumping through his throat, Patrick’s heart bypasses the throat to punch clean through his breastbone. His eyes have gone wet all of a sudden, like the almost-tears are being forced out. Like there’s no room for them in Patrick’s body with the way Jonny is pushing inside. “Oh my _fuck._ ”

His rim clenches compulsively around the adamant muscle of Jonny’s tongue. _Inside_ him. A harsh exhale from Jonny rushes across Patrick’s hot skin and highlights just how wet Jonny’s gotten him. There’s a ticklish caress down Patrick’s balls that makes him dig his shivering shoulders flat into the mattress, and he couldn’t even tell you whether it was an intentional swipe from Jonny’s thumb or the lazy spill of superfluous spit escaping Patrick’s hole and running down as Jonny tonguefucks him. Patrick tries to get a look at Jonny over his shoulder but the pleasure is drugging Patrick, making his lids too heavy to lift like his eyelashes are stuck together with honey.

“Jonny, you gotta… I need to,” Patrick runs out of breath again. He doesn’t know what’ll happen if he doesn’t get his dick touched soon. He could jack himself off, but he doesn’t dare pry his fingers from their current post because Patrick can’t take the risk of Jonny taking his mouth away for any span of time. Fuck, he can’t even think about it. 

“Sorry,” Jonny pants against damp skin, the chill of his breath sending goosebumps up Patrick’s exposed back. “Sorry, just give me…” Patrick never finds out what he’s supposed to give. 

Jonny dives back in, curling in _close._ His mouth is way too busy to form coherent words and then so is Patrick’s because apparently this shit gets him _loud._ This moan in particular stretches on, curving up desperately at the end like Patrick’s hips are, like a question. Like a plea. His balls draw tight. Jonny groans deep and, back in Patrick’s blind spot, slips a hand between himself and the mattress to squeeze his own dick. Patrick can’t see him do it, but he can feel it as clearly as he could if all five fingers were wrapped around Patrick’s dick.

All Patrick’s muscles lock up. Jonny is touching himself, not Patrick, but Patrick can feel his grip, tight and hot and achingly familiar. Patrick can feel it as intimately as he feels the sinuous tongue delving impossibly deeper inside him. It’s too much; Patrick’s dick shoots all over the sheets, virtually untouched. 

He’s gasping jerking and dropping his abs to the mattress to grind his release into the bed. There’s a tremor across the mattress as Jonny’s movements go wild and then still. Later, Patrick may have the presence of mind to regret letting Jonny get himself off when Patrick still has so much he wants to try. But right now, it’s all Patrick can do to get air. Totally wrung-out, he focuses on each breath he takes. They slow down and lengthen as Jonny pulls himself up the bed, side by side with Patrick, who rolls to lie half on top of Jonny just because he can. Patrick’s head feels extraordinarily clear and elevated; it’s like his mind cleared the clouds and reached the height where nothing is there to muddy it.

Patrick inhales deep and something smells awesome. Bittersweet citrus peel, fresh asphalt, juniper, car seat leather, and musk. Patrick pulls in air, trying to get more. “What is that?”

“What’s what?”

“Th’t smell,” Patrick mumbles, not bothering to open his eyes. He tries to separate the scent’s layers so he can describe it to Jonny, but the individual notes elude him now, like it’s all one inseparable aroma that he should recognize as is. “S’not cologne but sorta.”

Jonny’s fingers brush over Patrick’s shoulder. “That’s you.”

“Oh,” is all Patrick can say. He breathes it in. “All the time?”

“Every damn day.” Jonny is holding him, Patrick realizes belatedly. He likes it.

They’ve been wrapped up together for long enough now that their skin is the exact same temperature, their pulses have the exact same tempo. It’s like Patrick’s body has transcended being a solid; it has no boundaries anymore. He’s shapeless puddle of a person and Jonny got poured in with him. 

“What’s that face?” Jonny says from somewhere on Patrick’s left. Or his right. It would be easier to tell if he knew which way was up.

“Huh?”

“You look like you’re thinking something weird.” Jonny eases his arm out from under Patrick so that he can stretch out on his stomach.

“I dunno what I’m thinking. Surprised either of us is even making sentences,” Patrick garbles. His lips hurt, though they don’t taste bloody anymore.

“Truth,” Jonny sleepily agrees.

Patrick doesn’t realize he’s smiling to himself until Jonny catches him.

“What?” Jonny frowns.

“Nothing. You just sound like me, is all.” Patrick slides a fucked-out grin and a sideways glance in Jonny’s direction. “So. Compatible?” Patrick checks.

“Compatible,” Jonny confirms.

“That’s gotta be a record for bonding. Shortest or longest, I’m not sure,” Patrick babbles. “Shit, Jonny, it snapped together right on the spot. If that’s how it was, I’m kinda shocked we didn’t just bond on accident before now.”

Jonny lets out a laugh that somehow sounds both tortured and happy. “Yeah, no thanks to you. I was hanging by a fuckin’ thread.”

With a curious sound, Patrick sits up a little in wordless question.

“Keeping it from happening, I mean. I wanted to but I knew you didn’t—I _thought_ I knew you didn’t want a bond, and I for sure knew you weren’t aware of what was going on. Of the signals you were sending. But I didn’t wanna say anything and scare you off, and I definitely didn’t wanna stop,” Jonny waves a sloppy hand that Patrick interprets to mean ‘fooling around with my smokin’ hot host brother.’ “So I was keeping it in check. _Not_ easy. Fucker.”

“Me? What’d I do?!”

“What didn’t you do,” Jonny grumbles into his forearms. “Swear to god we almost bonded on your fucking couch watching a Ducks game. I didn’t say anything because I thought the only difference it would make is scaring you off and I didn’t want to stop seeing each other, so I powered through it. Blows my mind you couldn’t feel it; on my end it would get to a point where it was like a black hole trying to suck me in.”

“You wanna rethink that comparison?”

“A black hole with pretty eyes.” Jonny is unbelievably loose and unfiltered in spite of the serious subject matter. There isn’t a tense muscle in his body.

Patrick bites him on the shoulder but it fails to get a rise out of Jonny. “So you’re saying my soul is a slut.”

“Huge slut,” Jonny yawns, eyelashes dusting his cheeks. 

Jonny is never this forthcoming about sentinel stuff. It could be a side effect of his general lassitude in this particular moment, or maybe talking about it is less fraught for Jonny now that his bonding issue is settled. Either way, Patrick won’t let the opportunity pass him by.

“And when you said ‘tell me no,’ that’s cause the other bond wasn’t taking?”

“It wasn’t clear whether it was from dysfunction or VF. I didn’t think it had gotten that bad. Caught on eventually, though.” Jonny pauses and blinks, visibly rewinding to cater to his audience’s level of understanding. “VF is—”

“I know what VF is, you condescending buttmunch,” Patrick grouses, even though that only became true roughly four hours ago.

“Oh really? What happened to ‘I’m sentinel illiterate, use small words?’” Jonny snarks. “What, you’re a perductologist now?”

“I know enough,” Patrick sniffs. He’s lying, of course.

Jonny eyes him expectantly, chin propped on one hand. He looks so good like this, stretched out golden and lean across the pristine linens. “Bullshit.”

“I do know! It’s a thing like when you go to high five someone and they leave you hanging, only it’s for weeks or months, and instead of your hand it’s, like, your mortal soul.”

Jonny opens his mouth but Patrick forestalls his rejoinder with an index finger and the firm challenge, “Am I actually wrong though? Can you say that I’m wrong?”

Rather than admit defeat like a man, Jonny smooshes a pillow over Patrick’s face. Patrick just lies there under the pillow, too comfortable to bother struggling. He feels Jonny shift on the bed next to him, then a light kiss on Patrick’s exposed shoulder. The huge pillow blocks all the light and most of the noise from the room, and Patrick is blindsided by the reminder of that awful night in the locker room when Jonny was going through the fugue protocol. Patrick rolls onto his side to free his mouth, repeating, “Months,” as he dwells on the idea.

Jonny hums into his skin. 

“Since, what, Sweden?” Patrick knocks the pillow off. He considers that overwhelming elephant in the room feeling he started to get around Jonny after the tournament, wonders if the explanation could really be so simple.

Jonny shrugs in that ambivalent way that means ‘yes, that exactly.’ He’s laying on his stomach, head resting on his arms. The pose unconsciously shows off Jonny’s back to its best advantage, highlighting the slutty way it curves up at the end only to be hidden under the sheet.

“I didn’t know what was going on for a long time either,” Jonny says. “I didn’t have a good frame of reference. I mean, I knew we were… but I didn’t realize it had actually started to form until months later. I’ve read tons about bonds, but it’s not something you can really learn secondhand, what that really feels like. I felt _something_ around you, obviously, but I thought that was just—”

“You thought that was just…” Patrick prompts slowly.

“Excuse me, my phone is ringing.” Jonny is out in a flash.

Patrick calls after him, confident and grinning, “No it isn’t!”

Jonny comes back from the bathroom and just the sight of him makes Patrick glow. Patrick’s whole body hums with it as Jonny cleans them up with a damp towel. It’s that feeling he’s gotten a lot around Jonny this spring, but even stronger. That feeling you get when school is out for the summer and you can just let your brain float free, flush all the excess concentration and trivia out. That sudden high when you don’t have to think so damn hard, when you can just _be_. And he gets an inkling that that feeling might not actually be his, or not his alone. Patrick doesn’t know if the feeling is his or Jonny’s, but he’s pretty sure that he’d feel this way without any guide shit involved whatsoever. He inhales slowly. Happily. Even breathing feels good.

“You’re like the last day of school,” Patrick slurs sleepily.

“Go to sleep,” Jonny condescends with gentle laughter in his voice. He combs a fond hand through Patrick’s hair. 

I don’t want to, Patrick thinks but doesn’t say. His body is ahead of him, most of the way asleep already and his mouth won’t move. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Jonny can make fun of him all he wants. Patrick is bulletproof from here on out.

Jonny picked him first.

*

The stage lights leave Patrick blind for nearly a minute after he comes off the stage with Dale Tallon’s arm still around his shoulder. Patrick is basically shaking as the aides scurry them through dim backstage channels onto another eye-searingly bright set for a live ESPN segment. The Blackhawks cap sits snug and perfect on his head. Makeup people flurry around the anchors but leave Patrick unmolested, pronouncing him “dewy.” It’s probably the vindication shining through, his sheer joy. He barrels through the interview in some kind of ecstatic blur. He’s a Blackhawk. The ESPN anchor turns to Tallon for a question and in the lull, Patrick remembers that Jonny’s watching live from Winnipeg. The thought makes him glance reflexively at the camera and flash a grin, flirting with the camera a bit with his tongue behind his teeth.

Picked first overall. The year to come is daunting, living apart from Jonny and experiencing each other’s triumphs through TV screens like this, but Patrick thinks it has to be worth it to feel this way. To know he went as far as he possibly could. To know he showed them. To know he did it himself but not on his own.

What does Jonny look like right now? Is he on the couch? Is he wearing that Kane family vacation t-shirt Patrick gave him? Did he tear up the way Patrick is trying not to? Despite his best efforts, Patrick knows his own eyes are looking glassy as he floats from the ESPN set to the next one in a haze, too overwhelmed with pride and happiness. He’s trying to soak in the moment, but it’s tougher than he expected to be here without Jonny. Jonny only left for Winnipeg a week ago to spend some time with family. It’s not as if they haven’t seen each other—it’s been a month since the Sabres were knocked out of the playoffs in Game 7 of the ECF and Jonny spent nearly every waking moment of the following three weeks with Patrick. Jonny’s still planning on spending the remainder of the summer in Buffalo looking for an apartment (pending Justine’s approval that he’s steady enough to live on his own) and training (with Patrick). So Patrick shouldn’t feel bereft. That isn’t even a word he uses.

JVR and Turris catch up to him on set for their draft portraits, and Patrick tries not to smile too hard when he’s congratulated. It’s just. He’s so dang proud. Eventually, after they’ve taken enough photos to make a feature-length stop motion film about Patrick’s draft day, the league’s media people release him so he can track down his family who swarm him tearfully.

In that moment, it hits Patrick all over again how weird it feels, not having Jonny here. Not just because Jonny is Jonny, but because Patrick’s whole family is here and—as much as Patrick tried to resist it—Jonny has a place in the family. There’s an empty gap now, to the right of Jess and to the left of his mom’s sniffling, where that blockhead should be.

“Pull it together, son. We’ve got an interview in a minute,” his dad says, though his eyes are way redder and mistier than Patrick’s. 

That next interview is when it really starts to sink in that it happened. He did it. When a Sports Illustrated reporter describes Patrick as a beacon of hope for a Chicago team in need of redemption and asks him about locker room leadership, Patrick gives a canned response. Secretly, he’s a little scared by the possibility of being given the C or an A anytime soon. He can’t think of anyone else currently in the Blackhawks’ system who stands out as a potential captain, but it’s not a role Patrick has ever identified with. He’s still so young, but the fact remains that he’s a first overall pick for a success-starved team in a league where the captains are getting younger and younger every year. It’s not out of the question. Just in case they do select him for the job, he’ll have to come up with a gracious way to tell the front office that’s not his steez and thanks but no thanks.

Mercifully, Patrick’s train of thought is redirected by the next question. He gives his dad a cheeky furtive glance when the reporter asks about Patrick’s agent, or lack thereof. If he answers that question a little loudly, it’s just to be heard over all the commotion around them. There’s supposed to be a system to this media circus, but the tunnels of Nationwide Arena are total chaos. Journalists, families, draftees—oh there goes Couture with, dammit, no visible puka shells—and event organizers jostle around one another and double back, clearly turned around. 

After wrapping up the Sports Illustrated interview, Patrick and his dad head back towards the stage looking for the girls. The crowd parts to reveal a brief glimpse at the far wall and holy shit.

_“Jonny?”_

This might be the only time Patrick will ever be overwhelmed enough to be surprised by his own sentinel like this. 

“Jonny, what are you doing here?” He’s wrapped around Jonny before he’s even thought about it. It’s way too soon when Patrick has to cut the contact off short to keep it within bounds of bros.

“What would I be doing anywhere else?” Jonny says it nonchalantly, but Patrick’s heart still flutters. 

“Fuckin’ right,” Patrick agrees quietly. What hotel is Jonny staying in? How long will they get to see each other? “Dad, were you in on this?”

But his dad clearly wasn’t, judging by surprise still written across his face. Coach Kane also doesn’t look especially pleased to see his star forward and Patrick feels more and more sure that is dad has figured out that something is going on between him and Jonny. It’s the only explanation that makes sense because Patrick’s dad loves Jonny. His dad schools his face and gives Jonny their traditional greeting—the start of a hardy handshake before his dad remembers Jonny doesn’t shake hands and uses his hand to instead shoot Jonny an awkward fingergun. He doesn’t know yet that Jonny is fine to shake hands now. Jonny’s waiting until the Sabres’ training camp to tell management in person that he has a bond. A damn good one.

Patrick’s dad asks over the din whether the backstage mayhem is pushing it for Jonny, but Jonny assures his coach that he’s got a handle on it. Patrick wonders if he’s ever going to stop feeling embarrassingly proud during moments like this one. Jonny thumbs the brim of Patrick’s Blackhawks cap while Patrick tries to tamp down his sappy smile. 

They barely get beyond hellos before they have to separate so the Kanes can field more questions from the press. There’s no end to the father-son interviews. Meanwhile, an enterprising reporter takes notice of a stray Jonathan Toews waiting on the sidelines and seizes the opportunity to get a soundbite from him about the Sabres’ future. 

Patrick is shamelessly snooping on Jonny from across the hall. He’s rewarded for being a creeper when the ambush interview makes Jonny do that little ‘oh jeez’ flat-mouthed muppet expression he makes when he’s put on the spot. Patrick loves that dumb little expression.

“I’m looking forward to seeing these prospects come into their own in Buffalo. It’s an exciting prospect pool for sure,” Jonny is saying. As usual, he maintains heavy eye contact with the interviewer but occasionally gives the camera a little glance as if to check that it’s still there.

“Can fans take that to mean you’re looking to stay in Buffalo for the long haul?” The reporter pivots his microphone back in Jonny’s direction.

“I love Buffalo. I’m lucky to be there,” Jonny says, looking over the cameraman’s shoulder to float a soft grin over to where Patrick is standing. “I’d be happy to be a lifetimer. It’d be a privilege.”

Beside Patrick, his dad gives a weird sigh. He’s spying on Jonny, too, his eyebrows knit together with concern. Patrick frowns. Is Jonny saying something wrong? Sounds like a textbook interview to Patrick, but he’s still a novice at this stuff. Or is his dad’s expression related to those other looks Patrick has noticed him giving Patrick and Jonny for months now? 

“Everything okay, Dad?”

His dad half-succeeds in turning his grimace into a smile. “I’m glad you and him got to be such good friends, Buzz. Helluva kid.”

Patrick scrutinizes his dad, whose eyes remain on Jonny bashfully fielding praise for his playoffs debut. For over a month, Patrick suspected that his dad had found them out, that the paternal chagrin was aimed at him. But now that doesn’t seem right either. It’s more like Patrick’s dad knows something about Jonny that Patrick doesn’t.

Their strange conversation is interrupted by the loud chime of a text message coming from his dad’s pocket. (If he concentrates and Jonny is nearby, Patrick can hear the difference between identical ringtones from his and his dad’s Blackberries. Patrick’s model is newer by a year and its speakers are the tiniest bit different. Sentinel hearing is wild.) Patrick peeks before his dad opens the text. It’s from Buffalo’s GM, who’s been wheeling and dealing all day at the Sabres’ draft table. Three picks to go before they’re on the clock.

Patrick glances around. There’s a writer from the Chicago Tribune waiting for them. “Do they need you out on the floor? I can solo this next one.” When there’s no reply, Patrick turns to face him. “Dad?”

His dad doesn’t hear him, eyes intent on his cellphone. It chimes a second time and there’s that look again. Guilt. Fatherly regret. Disappointment. And as Patrick only began to suspect a minute ago, those paternal feelings aren’t actually directed at his son. His dad’s attention darts across the chaotic tangle of people and media to the far wall. To Jonny. 

His dad winces and totters through the crowd with his back to Patrick. Oh. Patrick’s dad knows something about Jonny that _Jonny_ doesn’t. When he reaches Jonny, he puts a hand on his player’s arm and starts to say something like, “Jonny, son—”

A swell of boos from the massive audience drowns out his words. Bettman is at the podium.

“Ladies and gentlemen—” The surging tide of heckling quells his nasal voice for a spell. The backstage mayhem burbles down as people turn their attention to the monitors showing the action on stage. “I think you’re gonna wanna hear this.” 

Patrick doesn’t turn, though. He only has eyes for Jonny, who isn’t looking at Patrick or Patrick’s dad or Bettman. Jonny is looking at his own phone as it lights up, comically small in his broad palm. He doesn’t answer it, though. He glances up, gaze hitting Patrick through the screen of bystanders sure as a shot. 

Later, he won’t be able to explain it, but Patrick is already smiling. Jonny starts to tilt his head at Patrick in that curious way of his and Patrick’s dad clears his throat to resume what looks like an apology, but the sound system cuts him off again. The speakers boom and echo with the commissioner’s voice.

“We have a trade to announce.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](https://cupstealer.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
